


Fish Out of Water

by dark_roast



Series: Fish Out of Water [1]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-08-31
Updated: 2005-08-31
Packaged: 2017-10-10 07:25:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 16
Words: 41,078
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/97158
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dark_roast/pseuds/dark_roast
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Crossover - VM Season One + ??? (AU)<br/>Rated R for Logan's potty mouth.<br/>SPOILERS for all of Season One</p><p>Logan opts to leave Neptune, and spend summer vacation with his grandparents.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Good to the Last Drop

**Author's Note:**

> Regarding the crossover, I initially chose the mystery material because it was the most bizarre, ridiculous, cracked-out thing I could think of to cross with Veronica Mars. No on else would ever write this story (probably). However, as the fic progressed, I discovered supporting "evidence" within canon. The idea became weirdly plausible. Which I guess just proves the adage that if you stare hard enough, you're bound to find what you're looking for eventually.
> 
> If I said what the mystery crossover was, it would ruin the surprise. Those familiar with the crossover material will figure it out immediately in Chapter Two. Those not familiar with it can read the story without knowing anything ahead of time, just like Logan.

Logan skidded the XTerra to a halt and swung the wheel sharply right.  He felt the SUV's back end squeal-crunch against the cement barrier, the shuddering shock of the impact.  He threw the door open, sprinted and sprang to the railing of the bridge, taking it in a half-gainer — bam! Over and gone.

Or.

Some nights he stood up there thinking about it, the cold wind ruffling his hair and snapping his sleeves and his pants legs, looking straight down from the bridge to the vast blackness below.  He knew the jump was coming.  Sometimes he wanted it.  Sometimes he was helpless to stop it, and those nights were bad. 

He didn't actually remember the night on the Coronado Bridge.  He watched Veronica and her father walk away across the beach, Veronica not looking back; then he woke up later that afternoon -- no, the _next_ afternoon -- sprawled half-off his bed, still in his clothes and still mostly drunk, a hangover gathering in his head like a late-summer storm.  His face looked like a busted pumpkin.  He assumed his father had gotten after him.  Later, he learned Aaron Echolls was flat on his back in the ICU at Neptune Memorial.  Not in a position to be getting after anybody. 

Flashes of memory surfaced later.  He hadn't been afraid.  He'd been ready to die.  The height of his fall and the surface tension of the water would make it like landing in concrete. He'd be killed instantly, just like his mom.  No swimming to shore and starting a new life under a new identity.  No free at last.  No drowning.  Dead.

He would wake up at three or four in the morning, shivering in chilly sweat, a taste in his mouth like he'd been sucking on tin foil and a firm certainty in his head that _this,_ the dim ink wash of his bedroom, _this _was the dream, and he had jumped, and this was all there was after death, this one day and this one night spooling on an endless loop for all eternity.

By the middle of July, the nightly meeting of The Coronado Bridge Club had accomplished what Duncan and Trina and all their nagging failed to do: Logan stopped drinking.

There was no getting over this.  All these things he'd crammed into a hard, heavy ball inside of him like an Acme cartoon bomb.  All these things he would not, could not think about.  Could not even begin, because to begin was to touch a match to the fuse, knowing the explosion would tear him to pieces.

But, the nightmare was worse.

He knew she would come by the house.  He was surprised she hadn't been 'round already.  He didn't want to see her. Yeah, yeah, sure.  She was wrong and sorry and guilty and she could never make it up to him, and he'd take one look at her and collapse like a soufflé, because she was a gorgeous, golden light, and he was a stupid fuckwad.  Last fall, after he'd served detention for helping Weevil plant the school flagpole in Mr. Daniels' car, his father had broken three of his ribs.  That's what it felt like.  He wanted her so badly, it was like breathing knives.

Sometimes, he didn't wake up after jumping.

"Seriously.  What do you think you can do to me?"

"Why dontcha step down, and we'll have a chit-chat?"




Logan snorted.  Somewhere in the darkness of the San Diego waterfront, a bell began to sound the hours in rolling, iron-throated strokes.

"Okay, okay." Weevil conceded.  "Get down here, and I'll beat the shit out of you.  That's what I meant."

"Hmm..." Logan tapped his chin with one finger.  "Tempting offer, but no thanks."

"What difference does it make?  Be a pal, huh?  Lemme beat you up." Weevil laid his helmet on the seat of his bike, and stepped forward, hooking his thumbs under his belt buckle.  "All the comforts of home. I promise."

Logan raised his middle finger to Weevil.  _"Morituri te salutamas,"_ he said with a smirk, and stepped backward off the railing.

He was right.  It was like falling forever.  He didn't even realize when he sliced from night air into water.  He was wrong.  He didn't die immediately.  He sank, trailing a last breath from his nose and mouth in a stream of silvery bubbles.  The cold speared him, clenched its claws in his muscles; pressure crushed his ears as he plunged deeper and deeper.

The pylons of the bridge glowed with green phosphorescence, warty with barnacles, trailing seaweed like drowned hair.  Things swimming and squirming in the deeper blackness below waited to welcome him.  Farther down glimmered the faint shapes of domes, arches, turrets: a city under the water.  It didn't seem strange that he could see everything, while at the same time he knew it was utterly dark.  Still he heard the bell tolling long, low note after note.  The sound was coming from the city beneath him.

That struck him wrong.  Truly, superbly wrong.  He thrashed toward the surface of the water.  Let Weevil beat the shit out of him.  Hey, no problem.  Let his dad continue to use him as a punching bag.  Fine.  Bring it.  Anything but this endless, endless falling, darker and colder than he'd ever imagined.  He struggled against the drag of the water, fighting the urge to open his mouth and breathe in.  This wasn't what he'd wanted.  This wasn't death. 

Something snagged his ankle.  His mother floated in the water just below him, greenly pale and bloated, sleek with a pearly pattern of scales, eyes blackly ancient.  Logan opened his mouth to scream, and inhaled water.  It went down with an icy burn, and a dark sunburst of pain spread through his chest.  She smiled, tightened her webbed hand around his ankle and drew him down to her embrace.

Logan flailed awake to blinding daylight.  He had absolutely no clue where he was.  A moment later, he realized he was in his truck.  The Coronado Bridge, the PCH Bike Club, the darkness, the water — gone.  The Yellow Peril sat in the parking lot of a strip mall, under the stippled shade of a willow tree. His cell phone buzzed in his pocket.

Duncan, sitting in the passenger seat, smiled.  "Morning."

Logan stared at him for a second, then shook himself and pulled out his phone. The display screen read,

Incoming Call  
Heartless Bitch

He had about fifty messages he hadn't listened to since the night on the bridge.  _The _first _night, you mean_. Maybe all the messages were from Veronica.  He didn't know and he didn't care.  He did care.  He just didn't want to deal with her shit.  He wanted to deal with her shit.  He couldn't.  He could.  He wouldn't.  He didn't.  He chucked the phone into the back seat of the XTerra and turned to Duncan. "How long was I asleep?"

"Not very."

Logan rubbed his eyes.  He felt like he was looking through two pinholes. "Why didn’t you wake me up?"

"You told me not to.  Besides, you looked like you needed it."

_Yeah.  I needed that little catnap like a I need a hole in the head. No, strike that.  Trepanning might help. _

Then the first part of what Duncan had said swung around and donkey-punched Logan:  _You told me not to._ 

_"Hey, Dunk  — let's pull over here for a sec.  I'll catch some Zs, and have myself a pants-pissingly scary nightmare where my dead mom tries to drown me.  I've been having the same dream nearly every night, but ya know... I kinda missed it.  I'd like to have it in the middle of the day for a change.  So, whatever you do, don't wake me up."_

Logan had no memory of saying anything like that.  _Why the fuck would I tell him not to wake me up?  _Of course, Duncan had no reason to lie.

"... it been since you ate some soap?" Duncan asked.

Logan squinted owlishly at him. "Huh?"

"I _said_," Duncan repeated, like he was talking to a two year-old,  "how long has it been since you got some sleep?"

"About two minutes."

"Seriously."

"I don't know.  Couple nights."  _Or,_ _possibly more like a couple weeks._

Duncan frowned.

Logan added, "A little sleep deprivation's not gonna kill me.  I looked it up on Wikipedia.  You have to be awake for months before that happens."

"If you looked it up, then you've probably been awake longer than two nights."

"You were so much more fun when you were medicated."

"You were more fun when you were drunk," Duncan retorted angrily.

_Ow. _

"Nice," Logan said.  "Cute. Thanks a lot. Get out of my fucking car, Donut."

Duncan glared at him. "Tell me something, Logan.  Are we still friends?"

Logan jumped out of the XTerra.  He took two running steps and gained the bridge railing; another leap and he'd be —

"Come on, Logan," Duncan said from behind him.  "Cut the shit and talk to me.  Please."

_Jesus Christ._  Horror poured over Logan in a chilling wave.  He'd actually been there.  On the bridge.  His brain hit a patch of gravel, the back wheels lost traction and started to slide.  The whole thing tipped, overbalancing, center of gravity skewing. He could feel it coming.  The crash. The explosion.  The shrapnel.

_No.  No-no-no-no-no._

Fists tight, Logan walked across the parking lot toward the Starbucks, passing beneath the circular sign of the green mermaid, her hands holding up the two forks of her tail, her smile especially for him. _ I'll see you soon, Logan. Just close your eyes and let yourself fall.   _Asphalt baked under his sneakers, sweat crawled on his cold skin and everything turned drowned and darkwatery for a second, like an eclipse crossing his vision.

_I'm losing my mind,_he thought.

_Okay, no.  Calm down.  Keep it together.  You haven't had any sleep for a while._  _That's all._ 

"Everywhere, creatures are falling asleep," he murmured. "The Collapsible Frink just collapsed in a heap."




A girl coming out with a tray full of coffee cups gave him a sidelong smirk.

"What the fuck 're you looking at?" Logan snarled, and she scurried past him out of the store.

_All right,  you've started quoting Dr. Seuss.   You've definitely gone a tad batshit._

Logan stood in line for the register, scowling at the tile floor between his feet, listening to that fucking stupid Hoobastank song playing on the overhead speakers.  Hadn't Hoobastank's fifteen minutes been over _months_ ago? 

He couldn't talk about it with Duncan. There was nothing to talk about,exactly.  Both of them had been through a gale-force shitstorm over the last few months.  It made Lilly's death last year pale by comparison, almost.  That had been a single, clean blow.  Girlfriend murdered, murderer caught, grieving and longing and moving on, and, awful as it was,  that was that.

But this.

This, this, this.

All this could be managed, he knew.  All this could be digested.  All this could be worked through, after a few billion dollars in therapy and some extensive electro-shock treatment, and maybe an ice-pick lobotomy.  All this could be filed neatly and locked away and never thought of again.

Without Veronica to hold him, soothe him, distract him, kiss him — he could not begin.  He  was a mess.  A no-longer-drunk mess.  At least when you were drunk, you were supposedto be a mess.  You were expected to take off your pants and threaten to kick people's asses if they didn’t Wang Chung. You couldn't make that excuse while you were hopped up on caffeine.

If Veronica resolved herself, all of this would fall in line.

_If you would go talk to her, she would. _ 

He couldn't.  It was just so — they were so — maybe they needed time apart.  That was such a fucking _chick_ thing to say, but maybe the chicks were right this time. 

"Hi, welcome to Starbucks; can I take your order?"

"Venti Mocha Valencia with an extra shot, and a venti Chai latte."

"Soy?"

"Cow."

"Name please?"

"Billy Joe MacAllister."

She wrote it on both cups without batting an eyelash.  "Seven-fifty, please."

He didn't even know why Duncan liked him.




Something flickered in the corner of Logan's vision: a vague dark shape edging close to him.  He turned his head.  Nothing there.  Nobody close to him in the coffee shop.  Sleep deprivation, that's all it was.  Classic symptom.  Shadow figures, phantom noises.  Talking Starbucks mermaids.  No problem.  He had it covered.  Everything was cool.

The shadow had shown up about a month ago.  The day he'd learned about his father screwing and then killing Lilly.  That had been a bad day — oh yeah, talk about your classic understatements.  He'd woken up drunk at four in the afternoon.  Hey, let's start the day bright and shiny with a new Logan Echolls All-Time Low.  Everything came sweeping back by the time he'd staggered into the shower.  His arrest, his breakup with Veronica, his exhibition of Matrix-fu on the Coronado Bridge, Weevil... things got a little fuzzy from that point on.  But, he'd obviously hit rock bottom.  Done a face-plant into it, to judge by his reflection in the bathroom mirror.  Then he'd turned on the television and discovered rock bottom had a trap door to a sub-basement, full of Morlocks.

Fucking bitch.




The sheriff's department turned the entire Echolls house upside-down following his father's arrest.  Even Logan's room.  Logan's stash of weed vanished, but in a single, small mercy, nobody mentioned it.  Logan guessed Deputy Leo had found the pot.  Deputy Leo.  Obviously in Veronica's pocket, probably also in her pants.

Logan wasn't in the habit of trashing his own room.  He was neat.  It pissed him off, seeing his shit tossed haphazardly everywhere, the bed covers balled on the floor, books and CDs in messy piles on the desk.  He started cleaning up. The help would get around to it eventually, but right now, the place looked like a frat house.  Straightening his room gave Logan something to do, so he didn't have to brood, which was something else he wasn't any fucking good at.  Brooding was another Duncan Kane specialty.  Maybe he'd call D.K. later and ask for some pointers. Maybe Duncan had an extra Yorick skull laying around.

As he was putting things away, he caught a dark shape standing behind him _(his father)_ and he turned fast.   His hip hit the desk; the stack of CDs cascaded clattering to the floor.  He was alone.  Logan hissed, exasperated, catching that nasty, ass-end of fear after the fact.  His heart jangled painfully before it settled down.

"Great," he muttered.

He put it in the CD player anyway.  Cranked the volume all the way up.  The angry, tribal bass and drums crashed over him.  Yeah.  Fuck yeah.  That was more like it.  That was exactly how he felt. 

Logan threw his head back and yelled at the top of his lungs, "Fuck! Fuck! FUCK!"

He found yelling very therapeutic, and he continued yelling until his litany of "fuck" became a wordless howl of rage and hurt; he kept that going as long as he could, expelling all the air from his lungs in one long scream until he ran out.  The moment he took a breath, a headache hit him right between the eyes. Black flecks splattered his vision, and his legs went shaky.

_Woo, damn!_  he thought, and bent over, hands on his knees, panting.

The volume on the Drowning Pool CD dropped.  Logan looked up; Duncan stood by the stereo as if somehow Logan's furious cry had summoned him like the Bat Signal.

"_Thank _you!" Trina called from somewhere in the house.

Logan straightened slowly, his head pounding, and stared at Duncan.  He had no idea what to say.  No strength or will to defend himself against any the many, many accusations Duncan would hurl at him.  He wouldn't have put it past Duncan to punch him in the face.

Duncan only said, "Hey."

"Hey," Logan replied.

Duncan shifted his weight awkwardly.  "How are you?"

Logan laughed shortly.  "All things considered, I'd say... " He see-sawed one hand.  "Mmm... completely shitty."

"I got here as soon as I could," Duncan gave a small, apologetic-looking shrug. "I had to sneak out.  I..." He ran a hand through his hair.  "Christ, Logan..."

"I'm sorry," Logan said. He knew how stupid and insufficient it sounded.  What else could he say?

Duncan's brows drew together. 

_Oh, here it comes, _Logan thought.

"No," Duncan replied, like he'd read Logan's mind.  "No."

He crossed the room and pulled Logan, startled, into a tight hug.  Logan didn't give a shit if it was weak or gay or whatever Duncan would rag him about later.  He hung on to Duncan for a second before letting him go.

"Don't you fucking apologize," Duncan said with soft ferocity.  "It's not your fault."

Logan did not contradict him.  Afterward, Duncan dropped by the Echolls house nearly every day, to play XBox, or watch TV.  The subject of Veronica was never mentioned.

The barista making the coffee was a plump, gorgeous girl with heavy black eyeliner and highlighter-pink hair.  The arch humor in her eyes reminded him of Veronica.  Everything reminded him of Veronica.  "Venti Valencia and Venti Chai for, ah... Billy Joe?"

Logan raised his hand.

She smiled and slid his drinks across the counter. "Have a good one."

"Thanks."

Logan left the store and went back across the parking lot to the XTerra.  Duncan had moved to the driver's side, and now he was sitting with one arm crooked out the open window.  When he saw Logan returning with the two cups of coffee, he grinned.  Logan was hard-put not to smile back.  He handed Duncan the Chai latte.

"I knew you weren't really mad," Duncan said.

"Shut up and drink your girly-drink, ass pirate."

"Are you gonna get in the car?"

"It's _my_ car.  You get out."

Duncan's eyes darkened with concern.  "I don't think you should be driving.  If you're that tired."

"All right. Fine. Whatever."  Logan walked around the other side, hopped in and shut the door.  It felt weird to be sitting in the passenger seat of his own car.

"I'll take you home," Duncan said.

"Okay, but I don't put out on the first date."

"Maybe you should go somewhere for the summer.  Away from Neptune, and everybody.  Even me.  I mean, you and I have got this... thing."

"This little blond thing."

"Yeah," Duncan sighed.  He glanced briefly over at Logan before returning his attention to pulling out of the parking lot and into the traffic along Mar Vista Avenue.  "Look, I don't know what to..."

"Forget it." 

Logan emphatically did not want to talk about The Veronica Problem, but Duncan seemed not to catch the ball, because he added,  "Go someplace alone and get your head straight.  I've been thinking about it myself, except my parents put me on lockdown ever since I jaunted off to Cuba.  I promise you I'm not going to try poaching on Veronica.  I wouldn't do that.  If it she chooses..."

"We both know she's gonna choose you, Duncan."

"There's the Echolls confidence I admire so much."

Logan smiled sardonically and took a sip of his coffee.

"I have to admit, I'm hoping for a dark horse," Duncan added.  "Some third guy we never see coming."

_Yeah, like Weevil Navarro.  Veronica's knight on a shining Harley, _Logan thought sourly.  He said, "So we can get shitfaced and bond over our mutual heartbreak."

"Exactly."

"Maybe you're right, man.  Maybe I just need to get out of Neptune for the summer."

"Don't forget to send me a postcard from Fire Island."

"Fuck you," Logan said.

"I don't put out on the first date," Duncan replied coolly.

Both of them cracked up.  Okay fine, they were laughing too hard at something that wasn't all that funny.  There was a definite edge of hysteria.  Didn't matter.  It just felt good to laugh for a change.

***


	2. Dial M for Martyr

The thing was, Logan actually had someplace to go.  At the beginning of summer, his grandmother called.  Right out of the blue.  By default, "grandmother" meant Isabel Lester, his mom's mother.  Grandpa Echolls was dead, and that was all the 411 available on the Echolls family.  He had no idea where his father's mother was.  Maybe she'd jumped off a bridge in Pontiac, Michigan.

Logan had never met the Lester grandparents.  They hadn't even been at his mother's memorial.  No big surprise.  Logan didn't know for sure, but he guessed his father had put his foot down.  Probably on somebody's neck.  Aaron Echolls did not approve of his wife's parents, and this was an opinion of long standing, and it got hashed over every Christmas, and his father yelled and his mother cried, and then they retreated to separate corners, and there was peace on earth, good will toward none.

Back in June, he'd been sitting out by the pool on a chaise, reading a _JLA _comic, methodically killing a six-pack, and eating Chicken in a Biskit crackers out of the box, when the phone rang. 

"Logan!" Trina called. "Telephone!"

Nobody called him on the house line.  Nobody he wanted to talk to.

"Tell them to fuck off!" he yelled back.

Trina walked out through the glass doors to the patio, holding the cordless handset.  "I'm not your secretary, buttwipe."  She thrust the phone at him.  "It's your grandmother."

"What does she want?"

"I'm assuming she wants to talk to her grandson."

"You know what happens when you assuming," Logan drawled.  "You make an ass out of you and Ming."

"Would you please take the goddamn phone?"

Trina continued to hold the handset out and, after glaring at her, Logan set his beer down and took the phone.  It occurred to him that his grandmother had no doubt heard his entire conversation with Trina, but he didn't give a shit. 

Trina stomped back to the house. Since his father had been hospitalized, his half-sister was supposed to be Logan's legal guardian.  Neither one of them was happy with the arrangement.

"Hello?"

"Logan?"

"Yeah."

"My goodness," said a female voice with a pronounced Yankee accent, "You sound all grown up."

"Every way except legally," he replied, wondering what the hell she wanted. "So, and... how are you and Grandpa James?"

"We're fine, dear," she replied briskly.  "Very sweet of you to ask.  But, that's not why I called."

"No?"

"Logan, your grandfather and I have been talking.  With everything that's happened to you, it must be a very difficult time, and Neptune must be a very stressful place to live.  We'd like to invite you come and stay with us.  We'd love to have you.  A week, a month, the whole summer. As long as you like."

Fury surfaced through the haze of his intoxication like a black headland rushing out of a fogbank.  He didn't even know why he was upset.  Was he angry at his grandmother for not bothering to call until everything was finished except for the hazmat cleanup?  Was he even angry at her? He was so angry at everyone and everything nowadays.  Nothing was fair and nothing was right and it never, ever fucking stopped, and his anger had absolutely no effect, no matter where it was aimed.  It was automatic now.  Wake up, brush teeth, seethe with impotent rage, drink heavily.  That was his daily do-list, right there.

Grandma Isabel, perhaps taking Logan's silence as Logan concocting a polite way to refuse, continued, "I understand perfectly if you'd rather stay at home.  Your friends are in Neptune, and there's not much for a young person to do here in Arkham.  We have a very quiet little town. But, if you need somewhere quiet, you're welcome here anytime."

"Thanks," he said. "I'll think about it."

He didn't.  Not until a month later, when Duncan suggested he get out of Neptune. 

But, he'd never spoken to his grandmother before last month.  He didn't know her at all, except from her notes on the inside-left of his Christmas and birthday cards.  The slanting, old-fashioned penmanship formed in his imagination.

_Dear Logan,  _

_How are you? We are fine.  Grandpa James' sciatica is acting up again.  We had a hard frost this winter, but my gladiolas survived.  Happy 17th birthday.  _

_Love, Grandma Isabel_




Had his grandmother actually written a note like that?  Logan had no idea.  He'd barely read her cards.  Maybe they'd said something completely different.

_Dear Logan,_

_We love you. We're thinking of you._ _We're waiting for the moment when Lord Sauron's all-seeing eye turns the other way.  When things look their absolute blackest, we'll step up and toss you a rope.  Until then, stay sane. _

_Love, Grandma Isabel_


  


  
_Dear Grandma,  _

_How are you? I am fine.  Thank you so much for the rope.  What a great present. It is exactly what I wanted.  I will try not to hang myself._

_Love, Logan_




Logan got a Coke out of the fridge and called his grandmother from the phone in the kitchen that evening.  Trina was out shopping her goods around somewhere, and the Echolls house held a deep cathedral hush, all Logan's own, for once.  The phone rang a few times with a blurry, far away sound and then the receiver clicked.

"Hello, Lester residence," said a female voice.  Hopefully his grandmother.  He'd been nicely toasted the first time he talked to her.  Mostly, he remembered the odd sound of her flattened New Englander vowels.  His mother had had almost no accent at all. She'd slipped a bit when she was excited or upset, and he caught a lilt of lobster country.  But Isabel Lester (if this was she) was full-on "Paahk the caaah in Haahvaahd Yaad."

"Hi.  Uh, can I talk to..."

"Logan?"

He smiled.  _I must be pretty obvious; I bet I'm the only person she knows who doesn't talk like that Pepperidge Farms guy._ "Yeah, it's me."

"Good heavens, what a surprise!  How are you, dear?"

"I'm fine," he replied. "I'm... well, I've been better."

"We heard about your father on the news," she said softly. "What an awful thing to happen to you, Logan.  I'm so sorry."

"Yeah.  I... it's been kinda rough.  Getting my head around everything.  I don't know where to start and sometimes I —" He bit his lower lip, hard.  Hot tightness swelled behind his eyes and nose.  _What the fuck are you doing? Quit babbling, moron._

"You've been through more tragedy in this past year than most people go through in a lifetime.  I think you're doing very well."

"Most days, I'd rather be dead."

"That's one decision you can't go back on," Grandma Isabel said.  "It's always better to have options."

The black cliff rose in his brain again.  "Really?" he snarled. "Why don't you tell that to your daughter, winner of this year's Free At Last Sweepstakes?"

His grandmother was silent.

"Shit, I'm sorry," Logan said, stricken and horrified. "I didn't —"  He closed his eyes.  _Drop a nuke on your grandma, and then swear at her.  Good one, Echolls. Real smooth._  "I'm sorry."

"It's all right, Logan," his grandmother replied.  "You should be angry. Your mother abandoned you.  That was unforgivable."

He'd never thought of it that way.  He hadn't let himself think like that, because it was his fault she was dead.  If he hadn't constantly provoked his father.  If he hadn't put her in the middle.  If he had been a better son.  He should have known, he should have seen.  He should have saved her. 

"She... she..."  He gave up.  "I loved her," he finished lamely.

"I loved her, too.  And so, here's a little grandmotherly wisdom for you.  If you take anything from this terrible experience, take the knowledge that suicide is a selfish act. It devastates those left behind.  There's always someone you leave behind, even though you may not think so."

Logan took a sip of his Coke, swallowing around the walnut lodged in his throat.

"You have your whole life ahead of you, Logan."

"Now, there's a notion to make me toss and turn all night," he said with a brittle laugh.

"As a personal favor to me, please stay around long enough for me to get to know you, all right?"

"Once you get to know me, you won't want me around."

"Hm." His grandmother sounded like she was smiling. "Why not let me be the judge of that?"

"Suit yourself." Logan ran a finger down his Coke can, tracing a path through the condensation. Water puddled on the spotless counter of the kitchen island in interlocking rings. "Listen. Grandma."  He hesitated, thinking how weird that sounded, and filled with sudden, queasy fear.  "When you called me in June, you said maybe I could..." He picked up the Coke can and put it down again, printing another ring on the counter.  _She's gonna say no. _ "...come stay with you?"

"I don't recall saying maybe," his grandmother replied crisply, then in a gentler tone she added, "Would you like that?"

"Yes," Logan answered. "Please."

"Well, your cousins are in town.  Jeanette and John Ross.  Your Aunt Eleanor's children.  They're both younger, but it might be nice for you to have someone under forty to play with — or, I suppose I should say 'hang out with,' shouldn't I?"

"Yeah, I don't get 'round to Gymboree all that often."

"You young people are so old," his grandmother sighed, sounding so dismayed that Logan laughed.  She added, "I meant what I said, Logan.  If you want to come to Arkham, you're welcome any time."

"How about right now?" Logan asked.

***


	3. Cross-Country Fleeing

Logan packed his suitcase and booked a flight to Arkham the next afternoon.  He called Duncan and announced he was going to Mexico.  Logan wasn't sure Duncan believed him, but it didn't matter.  Duncan accepted the lie without question, and insisted on driving Logan to the airport.  Logan let him.  Falling asleep at the wheel and ramming the XTerra into an overpass stanchion were pretty low on Logan's list of current worries, but his grandmother was right.  Somebody always got left behind.  Everybody would blame his father, Trina would parlay it into a book deal; Veronica would look phenomenal in black, and shed a few tears on Duncan's strong shoulder.  But, Duncan himself didn't deserve a kick in the ass like that.  Especially since he also offered to come pick up Logan when he came back to Neptune.  Duncan hugged Logan outside the LAX terminal.  Not a quick back-slap guy hug, but another actual hug. 

"Take care," Duncan said.

Logan gave his mental Rolodex of smartass quips a spin and came up empty.  He just nodded, lifted a hand to Duncan, and walked into the airport.

Forty-five minutes later, his plane took off.  He'd escaped Neptune.  His relief was tremendous, like a musty velvet drape lifting and letting light and air flow through every room of Chez Stupide.  He was flying east, eating his pretzels and passing the sun headed the other way, to spend the rest of the summer with grandparents he'd never met.

They wouldn't like him.  That was a given.  He was an asshole.  But, he needed a place to hide.  Inside his head it was the last days of Pompeii, ash and fire and stones raining from the sky, everybody doomed and pointlessly running and screaming anyway.  He wanted them to like him.  He wanted to be wanted.  This was his family.  A part of his fractured, scattered, fucked up family.  Maybe a place to belong.  And if they kicked him out, he'd pack his suitcase again and head for Acapulco, like he'd told Duncan he would.  That thought brought zero comfort, and Logan had no better options.

Arkham or Acapulco, though — he'd never walk alone.  Gliding behind him like a second shadow, this darkness.

His closest neighbor in first class had headphones on, bopping to the beat like a bobble-head hula dancer in the back window of a hipster's car, tapping away on his laptop with teeth-grinding cheerfulness.  A corner-of-the-eye peek at the computer screen revealed he was writing a screenplay.  Logan flirted with the idea of smacking the guy across the back of the head, just because.  But, that was Aaron Echolls talking. Logan unzipped his backpack instead; pulled out a pen and a battered green spiral notebook. 

What the hell, maybe he should make a list.  Organizing his thoughts was a place to start.  Not a nice place.  An interesting place, certainly.  The whole, "I'm running and running as fast as I can; can't catch me, I'm the gingerbread man, neener-neener!" strategy wasn't working out as well as he'd hoped. 

_You mean, it isn't working out as well as it did when you were drunk,_ he thought.  _Let's empty our pockets and lay everything on the table, shall we?_

Okay. Fine.  Even when he _had_ been drunk, that strategy hadn't worked for shit. 

Logan slapped open the notebook.  Some pages were already filled with notes and the beginnings of stories, but he had yet to write more than a few paragraphs of one idea before he lost interest and started something else.  He flipped to a blank page and wrote:

_1)_

He tapped his pen on the tray-table.  After staring at that single numeral for a while, he added,

_is the loneliest number that you'll ever do_

And,

_2)  can be as bad as one; it's the loneliest number since the number one, oh_

_3)  _

_Now I spend my time just making rhymes of yesterday._

He picked up the pen again:

_1)  is my dad who whacked my girl on the head_

_2)  she was a skanky whore —  she was fucking my dad — but wait, there's more, oh..._

_3)  is my best friend found his sister dead_

_4)  is his parents framed Abel Koontz instead_

"That line totally doesn't scan."

Logan glanced over, unsurprised to see Lilly sitting beside him, wearing her pep squad uniform, her hair in braided pigtails.

_I'm dreaming, _he realized.

"Maybe," she replied. "Or maybe you really did jump."

"Gee, thanks, Lil."

"No, I'm kidding." She slapped him lightly, playfully on the arm.  "The Collapsible Frink just collapsed in a heap.  You're dreaming."

Logan reached up to touch her hair, slipping the silky strands of one pigtail through his fingers.  He felt the warmth of her neck against the back of his hand.  He smelled her perfume.  "I miss you." 

Lilly's full mouth curved.  "Part of you is glad I'm gone.  Part of you hates me.  I made things complicated.  I was terrible to you."

"I could never hate you, Lilly.  I love you."

She tilted her head and her smile turned slightly mocking.  "I don't blame you for thinking that.  It's true.  Forgive yourself.  Forgive me, forgive your mom.  Move on, just like you said you would.  It doesn't mean you have to forget." 

Logan looked down at his lap.  Lilly's slim white hand slipped into his field of view.  Reaching across him, she picked up his notebook and paged through it.  Then she frowned at him.

"What the hell, Logan?" she demanded.

"Huh?"

She flapped the notebook at him. "You haven't written anything in over a year."

"Not since you died."  He shrugged.  "Doesn't seem to be any point."

"So I was your Muse?  Great. No pressure." Lilly tossed the notebook back on the tray table.  "I'm not worth giving this up.  I was a three-timing, father-fucking, cock-teasing cunt, you know."

"Jesus _Christ,_ Lilly."

She held up both hands.  "Hey. I'm a figment of _your_ imagination, Logan.  Oh, but duh!" She mimed slapping herself on the forehead.  "I totally forgot.  Look.  Before you get your panties in a knot over preserving the sacred memory of Dearly Departed Me — I'm supposed to give you two cryptic warnings about your future."

"Okay," Logan replied with a puzzled scowl.  "Hit me, Miss Cleo."

"Sometimes things are exactly what they seem.  Don't dig, and leave the devil alone."

"Wow, Lilly.  That's pretty darn cryptic."

"Yup. And you're going to ignore it."

"So, why bother telling me?"

"_So — _ later on I can have the pleasure of saying..." Lilly wagged a finger in Logan's face, and in a sing-song voice, declared, "I told you so!  But, here's my second warning, and you better not ignore this one: your mother has an excellent point."

"An excellent point about what?"

Logan opened his eyes, blinking in the bright sunlight slanting through the plane's west-facing windows.  The seat next to him was empty, and the notebook page in front of him read,

_1)_

When he reached Boston, he changed planes.  United Airlines Flight Seven, service to Arkham, turned out to be a puddle jumper.  The howl of the engines was nearly deafening, and when Logan asked for a Coke, the pretty stew bent down so her ear was right near his mouth.  The flight wasn't full, either.  Logan had no seat-mate, and he was free to stretch his legs and spread out all his carry-on crap.  No first class, no movie, and no meal service on the half hour flight, but instead of pretzels, he scored a bag of Famous Amos oatmeal cookies which was, in its own small way, completely awesome.  He ate his cookies and drank his Coke and read the Stephen King novel he'd picked up in the tiny airport Borders at LAX.  _IT_ was set in Maine, and therefore sort of like vacation research, maybe.  However, _IT _turned out to be about an evil, undead clown, (hopefully not something one normally ran across during vacations in New England), and the book was creepy as shit even in the middle of the day.  Logan couldn't stop reading it, of course, since he had a masochistic streak as big as all outdoors. 

He'd lost Mr. Slapworthy Screenwriter in Boston, but the dude sitting across the aisle from him on Flight Seven was interesting enough to pull Logan's attention away from Pennywise the Clown more than once.  Logan guessed the guy was somewhere around his own age.  Barrel-chested and powerful like a linebacker, he sat shoved into a rumpled, badly-fitting navy business suit, his head poking out between his hunched shoulders like a turtle's.  His skull looked narrow and flattened; his nose was squashed down and his eyes bulged. 

_Inbreeding?_ Logan wondered. 

Arkham was a college town, so it got a fresh shot of DNA pretty often. This guy probably hailed from some backwoods burg nearby, where "motherfucker" wasn't so much an insult as it was a statement of fact. 

What Logan really wanted to do was strike up a conversation but, "Dude, you got a fucked-up face," wasn't a great opener, especially since Turtle Boy looked like he could snap Logan in half like a green bean. 

_Miss your dear old dad that much, do ya?_

Logan went back to his book.  Around page two hundred, something else distracted him.  Several of the blank pages between the chapters were stamped with subtle watermarks.  He broke the book's spine and held it flat at eye level, tilting this way and that, so the sun struck the page at different angles.  Faint impressions of fish and frogs, seashells, and antique keys.  The book was a cheap paperback and watermarks an unlikely embellishment.  Logan was positive he was hallucinating.  Maybe he'd finally gone nuts — though if this was the case, it was a distinct bummer.  He'd been hoping for a spectacular flame-out, something that involved shrieking and gibbering, or his hair turning white overnight. That would be excellent.  He closed the paperback and tossed it on the tray table.

_"Sometimes things are exactly what they seem.  Don't dig, and leave the devil alone."_

A quiver of unease touched him.  Lilly said he would ignore her warning.  Maybe this wasn't even what the warning meant, but the more Logan studied the guy across the aisle, the less amusingly inbred he seemed, and the more flat-out disturbing. 

"Hey man," he said.

The guy didn't budge.

"Hey!"

This time the guy looked up, fixing Logan with murky-dark eyes.  Then, he actually glanced around to see if there was anybody else Logan might be addressing instead of him.

"Hi," Logan said, adding a little wave in his direction.

The guy nodded cautiously.

"I'm Logan."

"Gareth," replied the guy, in a soft, mushy voice, as if he wasn't accustomed to talking.

"You live around Arkham?" Logan asked.

Gareth nodded again.  "Near'baahts." He was silent for a moment, then he added, "Y'vuhstin kin'n Aahkm, a'htak't."

For a second, Logan wondered what language Gareth was speaking.  Then he caught up: _"Nearabouts. You're visiting kin in Arkham, I take it."   _

Logan grinned.  "Stand out that much, do I?"

"Ayuh. Wheyah from?"

"California. Visiting the grandparents."

Gareth brightened. " A laahng way." He patted the briefcase beside him.  "Nevah been fathah than Bahston m'seff.  Went fahra cahnference.  Hotel man'gment."

"Glad to be getting back?"

"A bit sickly for home, yeah."  Gareth put a hand to his head, smoothing his thin, pale hair.  "You mind me asking a question a bit personal?"

"Uh," Logan said. "Sure."

"You got some look of the Maahsh family about your eyes.  Any relation?"

"I don't think so.  My grandparents are Lesters."

"Ah." Gareth nodded, apparently satisfied with Logan's pedigree.  "Lestah. Kingsport family.  They go back to the revolution; at least that fah, I b'lieve."

"You mean the _American _Revolution?" Logan asked.

Gareth's wide mouth stretched even wider in a sarcastic smile.  "Ayuh."

"Haven't really kept in touch," Logan admitted with a shrug.

"Good piece ah y'history waiting for yah, then," said Gareth, lifted the in-flight magazine and went back to reading it. 

_Conversation over, I guess._

Not particularly offended, Logan sat back in his seat and picked up his book again.

***


	4. Driving Talk, Widow's Walk




"Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Arkham, Massachusetts.The local time is seven-forty, and the temperature is eighty-two degrees, with humidity at sixty percent.Please retrieve all carry-on items from the overhead compartments. We hope you have a very pleasant evening, and thank you for flying United Airlines."




Flight Seven touched down precisely on schedule and taxied toward Arkham Airport.  Logan flew all the time, but he still leaned over his armrest to get a better look out the window.  United's twin-prop was the biggest thing he could see on the airfield; the rest were all sport planes.  The lights of the airport glimmered warm and golden in the gathering blue twilight. 

He'd arrived.




Logan grabbed his backpack, tossed it over one shoulder, and followed Gareth and the rest of the passengers off Flight Seven.  There was no jetway.  They crossed the tarmac in a loose dolphin-pod, swimming through the gluey, windless warmth of the evening, and then into the terminal, which was meat-locker cold.  Gareth sloped over to the baggage claim without a glance in Logan's direction. 

"Excuse me... Logan Echolls?"

It was a young girl's voice.  _Veronica Fucking Mars,_ he thought automatically.  But, it couldn't be.  Not here.  Veronica had no idea where he'd gone.  He'd bolted out of Neptune so fast, it would have taken her at least a couple hours to realize he was gone and track him down.  She couldn't possibly have beaten him to Arkham.  Also, she wouldn’t have said "Excuse me."

Probably some teeny-bopper who'd seen his picture in the tabloids.  Making his expression as forbidding as possible, Logan turned around.  Sure enough, the girl looked about thirteen:  medium height and lanky, with a pointed face and big brown eyes.  She wore an Emily tee shirt, and her straight dark hair in a ponytail, sleek as a dominatrix's sleeve.  Beside her stood a very serious-looking boy, maybe nine or ten years old, so much like the girl, he had to be a brother.  He studied Logan intently from under the bill of a Patriots cap.

"I beg your pardon," said the girl, "are you Logan Echolls, please?"

She held up a snapshot Logan recognized as one his mother had taken of him last Christmas.  He'd been standing in front of the gigantic tree in the Echolls' foyer. He hadn't been smiling then, either.  The memory hit him with painful sharpness.  His mother's laughing exasperation,  _Honestly Logan! Can't I have just one photo of you where you aren't frowning?_

_Haven't you heard, Mom? _he'd teased her._ Nobody smiles anymore.  Frowning is the new smiling._

"I'm Jeanette Crane," the girl added, then indicated the boy.  "This is —"

"I told you," the boy cut in.  "He looks exactly like Grandma Isabel when she's mad."

" — John Ross," Jeanette finished.  "We're your cousins."

The tension drained out of Logan's back and shoulders.  "Yeah. I'm Logan. Hi."

The boy stuck out his hand. "Pleased to meet you, Logan."

"Likewise, John," Logan replied.

"John _Ross_, " his cousin corrected him, as they shook hands.  "Just plain John is my dad."

Jeanette kept her arms by her sides. 

"She's a touch-no," John Ross supplied.

"Very prudent policy, Jeanette," Logan said.  "I'm crawling with boy-cooties."

John Ross made a "hmph" noise, but Jeanette grinned, flashing a mouthful of braces.

"So, you're not Jeanette-Plus-Something?" Logan asked her.

"Nope," she replied.  "No other Jeanettes in the family yet.  I struck it lucky."  She flicked her head in the direction of the exit.  "Grandpa James is waiting with the car, so come on."

Jeanette bounced over to the baggage claim, her ponytail swinging, but John Ross held back.  Logan shortened his stride; he and his younger cousin fell into step and trailed Jeanette across the small airport, fording the cross-current of other passengers from Flight Seven.

"You were smart to come here," John Ross told him."You should stay in Arkham."

"I am staying.  I think."

"I mean for good.  Grandma Isabel said you could ma..." John Ross squinched up his face.  "Matriculate.  At Armitage High for senior year.  And live with them.  If you wanted.  But don't tell her I said that; I was eavesdropping." 

A swoop of exhilaration hit Logan, so sudden and steep it felt like terror.  No more Neptune.  No more Dad.  Maybe for the trial.  At a distance.  Temporarily.  And then he could leave.  There would be someplace for him at the end of the plane ride.  There would be this place, there would be people who wanted him back.

_Assuming they still want you by the end of summer, _that little voice piped up in his head.  _You know what happens when you assuming._

Okay, yeah.  He knew better.  The lights would snap on, the stereo would shut off and the party would be over.  Yet, the thought remained in all its improbable glory; a disco ball spinning in his head.  No more Neptune.

_No more Veronica._

_Christ, don't start that again. You're getting to the point where every single emo "you-done-me-wrong" song on the radio is all about you and Veronica, Veronica, Veronica.  Somebody dial 911 and get the waaah-mbulance —  we got a bleeder.  Dude, she tossed you like takeout from the back of the fridge.  Get. The fuck. Over it._

He watched Jeanette angle pointedly away from Gareth.  People in the airport were all eddying around him.  By the time Logan and John Ross caught up with Jeanette, baggage was already bumping through the chute onto the carousel.  Jeanette turned around, holding Logan's suitcase in both hands, her body tipped backward to balance its weight.

"You only brought _one_ suitcase?" she asked incredulously.

Logan glanced past her at the luggage still tumbling down the belt.  All right, his was the glaring stand-out: the sleek black Louis Vuitton his father had bought for his "birthday" party, monogrammed LJE,  and sporting LAX and BOS tags —  but how had Jeanette known it was his _only_ suitcase?  Had he dropped this tidbit during another memory blink-out like he'd had in the Starbucks parking lot?  Possibly. Who could say for sure? Certainly not Logan.

"Uh, yeah," Logan answered her.  "That's my only one."

"Is there, like, a tesseract inside here, or what?"

"No.  I never change my underpants..."

"Thanks for the over-share."

"... so, that frees up a lot of space."

Logan reached to take his suitcase, and Jeanette stepped back swiftly.  "I got it, Logan.  You're the guest.  Don't worry.  I'll start being mean to you tomorrow."  With another grin, she hooked around him and headed for the door. 

"I'll carry that for you," John Ross said, pointing at Logan's backpack.

"Thanks."  Logan handed it over, and John Ross swung the backpack manfully over one shoulder. 

_I'll bet they've got perfect table manners, too,_ Logan thought.

He followed his cousins toward the glass doors at the far end of the terminal, his attention split between them, and tracking Gareth as he shuffled over to the bus kiosk marked,

ALL POINTS: ARKAM-NEWBURYPORT-IPSWITCH-ROWLEY

John Ross grabbed Logan by the sleeve and steered him at the door.  "Don't look," he said out of the corner of his mouth.

"I'm not."

"Don't," John Ross repeated earnestly. 

Jeanette glanced back over her shoulder, sussed the situation, and shook her head. "You don't want trouble with them."

"With who?"

"Innsmouth folk," she said.

Logan looked at her blankly. 

Jeanette and John Ross exchanged an exasperated glance, then Jeanette said,  "Never mind.  Come on."

They left the air-conditioned haven of the terminal, emerging into the humid evening air again.

A gleaming black Mercedes sedan waited in the red zone, hazards blinking.  Jeanette and John Ross bee-lined toward it, and Logan trailed after his cousins. He had no idea what kind of Vaselined, rosy-hued version of Logan Echolls his mother had concocted in her letters and phone calls to the grandparents.  They probably expected The Troubled Yet Perfect Grandson — in other words, Duncan Kane.  Well, they were in for a surprise.

The driver's-side door opened and a man who had to be Grandpa James got out.  He was several inches taller than Logan, his brush-cut hair and neat Van Dyke beard both a mix of gray and blond.  Logan was convinced Grandma Isabel had railroaded her husband into taking Logan, that her, "We'd love to have you," was a Royal We — and even _that _seemed shady.  But, his grandfather actually looked pleased to see him.  He scooped Logan's suitcase out of Jeanette's hands, his darkly-tanned face crinkling in a smile.  "Logan!"

"Yeah." Logan found himself smiling back.  "Yes.  Sir," he tacked on.  Nervous.  Freaked. _Shit. Shut up. _ He closed his mouth.  Wished for some duct tape, so it would stay closed. 

"James Lester." Logan's grandfather clapped him on the shoulder, and then pulled him into a quick, one-armed hug.  "My God, look at you.  All grown up.  Are you sick of hearing that yet?"

"Nah," Logan replied. "Give me ten more minutes."

Grandpa James chuckled.  "Good flight?  Those puddle-jumpers can be pretty rough."

"No in-flight movie.  That was pretty rough."

"It's a half-hour flight," John Ross protested.

"Tcha! He's kidding, dorkfish," said Jeanette.

"Don't call me a dorkfish!"

"Then stop _being_ a dorkfish, dorkfish."

"Jeanette, don't call your brother a dorkfish," Grandpa James said, as though this was something he'd already said several times during the ride over.

Jeanette uttered a soft and scornful "Pfft!"

Turning to Logan, his grandfather added, "Well.  Let's go, shall we?  Before there's bloodshed?"

Logan nodded. "Right."

He and his grandfather tossed the baggage into the Mercedes' trunk, and then Logan slid into the back seat with John Ross.  Jeanette elected to ride up front with their grandfather, though the back could easily have fit all four of them.  The inside of the sedan was as cold as the airport; sweet relief from the sticky heat.  On the ride into Arkham, Logan's cousins gave him a running commentary on the local attractions, though as the evening deepened to night, it made their tour guide duties more problematic.

"That's all cranberries, there," Jeanette said, indicating marshy fields covered in a carpet of low plants.

"And that's corn." John Ross pointed, as the Mercedes passed rolling farm fields. 

Logan considered mentioning that he hadn't been raised in a lab, and that he'd seen corn before — however, his grandfather would doubtless thank him for not sparking another heated debate over who was, or was not, a dorkfish — and so, he kept his mouth closed.

"They probably won't harvest most of the corn until August," John Ross added, "but we can probably buy some at a stand on the side of the road.  Do you like corn, Logan?  Do they have white corn in California?  Jeanette can't eat corn.  It gets stuck in her braces."

"That used to happen to me," Logan said.

 Jeanette turned half around in her seat. "Logan, those animals over there are called —" She crooked her fingers, miming quotation marks.  "— cows."

"Mm-hm.  I've heard about these so-called cows."

"They're vicious predators," Jeanette said gravely. "Once they get a taste of human flesh, there's no stopping them."

"Don't make fun of Logan," John Ross interjected, looking so upset that Logan was both amused and touched. 

Loyalty was in short supply on the Echolls end of the family, unless you counted his father's brand: presenting a unified front to the outside world, never mind that the inside was fractured by treacherous fault lines.

"We're just playing," Jeanette told her brother, exasperated.

"Well, I don't like it when you make fun of _me_."

"That's because you have no sense of humor."

"Jeanette," said their grandfather in a warning tone, and she slid back down into her seat, looking completely unrepentant.

"Thanks for watching my back, man," Logan said to John Ross.

"No problem."

The two-lane country highway ribboned through a lush landscape that billowed over the fieldstone walls bordering the road, in a wild jungle confusion of trees and hedges and unmowed grasses.  No burnt browns or sere greens of late summer in California; not a palm tree or a cactus in sight.  Pale light sheeted across the darkening sky.  He twisted around in the back seat.  Definitely lightning, but no thunder followed.

"It's just heat lightning," Jeanette sighed.

"We keep hoping for a storm to break the heat," Grandpa James clarified. "So far, no luck."

John Ross said in a tone that sounded deliberately casual, "The Miskatonic River runs all the way through town.  We can go swim sometime.  If you want."

Logan smiled.  "Sure.  I'd like that."

Before long, they reached Arkham.  Logan missed the precise moment, but somewhere around Peabody Street, the Mercedes cruised through a time warp and emerged in the nineteenth century.  Brick and clapboard storefronts lined the streets; cobblestone sidewalks, manicured trees and hedges.  Not a single billboard or a glare of neon anywhere.  Even the Texaco station was a neat little Cape Cod with white trim and a discreet sign out front.  He saw SUVs and girls in jeans and a KFC on a corner, but he still couldn't quite shake the idea that he'd gone back in time.

"All this was built by mill owners in the early nineteen hundreds," his grandfather explained, confirming Logan's suspicions about time travel.  "No billboards, no office buildings over six stories, no strip malls.  We've got historical preservation contracts like you wouldn't believe."

"I'd believe it," he said.

The hills grew steeper as the center of town ceded to residential neighborhoods. Tall Victorian houses lined the streets, more eerie than elegant in the darkness, light gleaming through lace curtains and stained glass fanlights.  A shadow-cat streaked across the road in front of the Mercedes, and vanished.

Grandpa James said, "Arkham's quiet now most of the university staff and students have gone home for the summer.  We're an academic town.  We don't get too much tourist trade, and there's not all that much to do, unless you like dusty books."

Logan said, "My Calculus book is pretty dusty.  Does that count?"

Jeanette laughed.

His grandfather added, sounding amused, "Kingsport and Ipswitch aren't too far away, when you get bored."

But, Logan was tired.  Down-to-the-bone tired.  Something inside him had finally crapped out — his heart, or his spirit, or his poor, overloaded brain; he couldn't tell which.  Spending the summer sitting on the porch glider, reading _Modern Maturity,_ and yelling, "You damn kids get offa my lawn!" — that sounded like Heaven.  His grandfather was probably right; Logan would get bored before too long.  But, boredom at least would be a sign that his broken parts were mending.

The Mercedes crested the top of the hill, turning onto Saltonstall Street.  Logan gasped involuntarily as he caught sight of the Miskatonic River spread out beneath the town, the last sunlight striking the water like a sheet of hammered brass.

"Either you're gonna love Arkham," Jeanette said, "or you're gonna totally freak out and run away screaming."

"No thanks.  I already had my nervous breakdown last month," Logan replied.

His cousin briefly narrowed her eyes, as if trying to figure out whether Logan was kidding; as if the ground between playful teasing and overstepping had gone suddenly swampy. Logan wondered how much she knew about what had happened in Neptune.  Probably everything.  Her parents might have tried to shield her from it, but kids always had a way of finding out things they needed to know.

Jeanette said, "Well, Arkham Sanitarium is downtown on Derby Street, in case you change your mind."

Grandpa James turned off Saltonstall, and into a driveway in front of a house indeterminately colored in the dark.  Logan guessed maybe blue.  Azaleas and honeysuckles brushed his shoulders as he got out of the car.  Cicadas were out in force, chirring rhythmically in the bushes, and a cotillion of tiny lights flickered and waltzed drunkenly on the lawn.  Logan closed his eyes tightly, then opened them again.  The fairies continued to dance.  John Ross charged across the lawn, his cupped hands held up, and Logan realized he wasn't hallucinating.  He was watching fireflies.

"He is a _total_ dorkfish, you know," Jeanette remarked.

Logan pulled his suitcase out of the trunk.  "Come on, Jeanette. Let's all embrace the dorkfish inside."

"Very Southern California of you."

John Ross came running back to carry Logan's backpack, and then he marched up the front walk, lugging it proudly.

Grandpa James raised his eyebrows. "I can barely convince that boy to mow our lawn, even if I offer him money."

Jeanette shook her head. "Forget it, Grandpa.  John Ross thinks Logan is _cool_." 

"I'm cool," Grandpa James protested mildly.

"Not so much; no," she said.

Logan followed John Ross and Jeanette to the front door.  His grandfather and his cousins liked him well enough, but here was the final hurdle.  His grandmother.  The person belonging to the Yankee accent on the phone, the voice that soothed him into thinking that maybe, possibly the hole he'd fallen into wasn't as deep as it looked from the bottom. 

The house smelled like furniture polish, faint pipe smoke, old books, and dinner.  The Victorian had been lived in and worn for years and years, until it fit its present occupants perfectly, like an old pair of jeans.  It was completely different than the sprawling Spanish Colonial he called home.  Books everywhere, for one thing.  Not yards of matched hardcovers like in the Kane library.  He'd pulled a couple of those off the shelf once, and they were printed in Danish. To discourage browsing, he'd guessed.  Here were all mismatched sizes, ratty paperbacks and crumbling leather bindings crowded into the bookcases.  If Logan hadn't  known his grandfather was a professor at the university, this would have been a significant clue.

His grandmother came out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on a dish towel, and Logan's heart broke.  She looked exactly like his mother.  Of course, she didn't really.  But that was his first thought.  His second thought was that she looked the way his mother might have looked, if she had lived.  Grandma Isabel's dark eyes were his mom's eyes; the shape of her face was the same.  She wore her dark brown hair, just faintly threaded with gray, cut short to the nape of her neck. When she smiled at Logan, it was almost (but not quite) the same.

She broke the illusion with her accent, so much like his grandfather's and his cousins', terraced by those flattened vowels; lower and firmer than any tone his mom had ever used.  Here, at last, was the voice on the phone. 

"Logan..." She opened her arms.  "Come here and give your old granny a hug."

Isabel Lester was hardly an "old granny."  She was his mom's mother: she probably still turned heads when she walked down the street.  Logan set down his suitcase, and he was immediately enveloped in a fierce embrace.  For a small woman, his grandmother proved surprisingly strong and very reluctant to let go of him. 

"I'm detecting a _hint_ of favoritism here," Jeanette said dryly.

After squashing him thoroughly, Grandma Isabel stepped back and, with a glint in her eyes like she knew nobody but a grandmother could pull this crap and get away with it, she lightly pinched both of Logan's cheeks.  "Oh, Logan — _look_ at you!" she exclaimed.  "You're so handsome!"

To his mingled amusement and horror, Logan felt himself blush.  "Grandma, are you trying to pick up on me?"

"I'm sorry," she said.  And she really did sound sorry;  More sorry for embarrassing him than for the actual cheek-pinching, but sorry nonetheless.  "I'm so happy to see you.  I got a little carried away. It won't happen again.  I promise."

"Don't trust her," Grandpa James said darkly.

Grandma Isabel shot him a mock glare.

Her husband held up his hands.  "Isabel, I am only giving Logan the same advantage as your other two grandchildren." 

"She yells really loud at all my football games," John Ross said.  "It's embarrassing."

"We all know you're an evil mastermind," Jeanette added.

Logan's fatigue crashed into sweeping surreality.  This wasn't real.  Normal people didn't act like this.  He was still on the plane, dreaming.  He was still on the bridge, drinking.  He was still in the air, falling.  Black, black underneath him.

_Damn. You have _had it,_ dude.  You are officially fried.  To a crispy, golden brown._

"Oh, fine. Gang up on me," his grandmother huffed. "Why don't you see about setting the table, since you make such a crack team?"

"Yes, ma'am." John Ross glumly surrendered Logan's backpack.

Logan had it for about two seconds before his grandmother took it.  "Logan, I'll show you where I've put you."

"Do we get a meal out of this?" Jeanette wanted to know.

Grandma Isabel swatted her on the butt with the dishtowel; Jeanette cackled and ran down the short hallway into the kitchen, followed by John Ross. 

Grandpa James briefly laid his hand on Logan's shoulder again. "It's good to have you here, Logan.  Regardless of the circumstances."

"Thanks," Logan murmured.

His grandfather followed John Ross into the kitchen; Logan followed Grandma Isabel upstairs, past more shelves of books in the second floor hallway, past oil paintings and framed prints, and several windows.  He caught glimpses of the darkened front yard and a bit of Saltonstall Street. The third floor ceilings were lower, the hallway narrower.

"This used to be servants' quarters," Grandma Isabel explained over her shoulder. "Don't worry. I'm not hiding you up here like Rochester's mad wife.  If you're not comfortable, let me know.  We've got plenty of space."  She walked to the end of the hallway where the roof beams angled steeply.  She opened a small white door.  "This was Lynn's room."

She stood back and let Logan go in ahead of her.  The room was small, tucked under the eaves of the house. The ceiling sloped down toward the far wall, where a bed with a white, flower-sprigged quilt was snuggled into a corner, under an oriel window.  The floor was varnished wood, most of it covered by a braided rag rug.  Between a nightstand and a roll top desk, was a hobbit-sized door.  Opposite the foot of the bed, French doors.  He'd investigate those later.

Grandma Isabel moved to a low bookcase at the right side of the door.  The top shelf was crowded with trophies and (Logan saw with no surprise) a flotilla of mermaids: glass and ceramic, plastic and plush.

"I brought some of Evelynn's things down from the attic," his grandmother said. "I thought you might like to look at them."

Logan glanced automatically at the hobbit door.

"No, that's just a crawlspace."

"What's in there?"  He picked up one of the trophies.

"Hopefully nothing. We lost the key years ago." 

Logan turned the trophy over in his hands.  First Place, Swimming Competition.  Some of the gold plating had rubbed off of the swimmer on top of the trophy.  They were all like that: swimming and diving.  Only a couple second and third places. On the lower shelves of the bookcase were stuffed animals, books (his mother had had quite the V.C. Andrews obsession), and a jumble of miscellaneous stuff.

His grandmother brushed a hand wistfully over the shelf full of trophies. "Lynnie wouldn't come out of the pool until her lips were blue and her toes were pruney.  My little mermaid."

"She dressed up like a mermaid once.  We played a joke on her..." Logan shook his head.  "It doesn't matter.  It was stupid."

He set the trophy back on the shelf with the others, then reached for a framed photograph.  It showed two girls about his own age.  One of them was straight-up punk, pouting at the camera, sporting an impressive jet-black mohawk, a tattered Dead Kennedys tee shirt, stacks of studded leather armbands and rubber bracelets.  The other girl had stepped straight out of a John Hughes movie.  A gigantic mass of chocolate-brown curls swept back by a floppy white lace bow, a turquoise off-the shoulder tee shirt, piles of necklaces.  She was grinning, and her dark eyes held a sassy flash of fuck-you to rival the punker chick's sullen scowl.  Logan realized with a shock that this Madonna wannabe was his mother_._  The punker looked so much like her, she had to be his Aunt Eleanor.

"Wow," he said. "Damn."

"They were a handful," his grandmother remarked mildly.

"Yeah, I'll bet."

"There were times I would've cheerfully sold either one of them at a tag sale — but now I miss them.  I miss the _teenagers_; isn't that funny?  The house seems too quiet."  She smiled impishly at Logan, looking just like her daughters.  "I'm sure you'll pick up the slack."

He put the photo back on the shelf.  "I'll do my best."

Grandma Isabel touched Logan's head lightly, smoothing his hair down; he supposed there was enough gel in it that it sprang right back up again.  "Is that the way it's supposed to look?" she asked.

"I guess."  He rubbed a hand through it, feeling shy of her again.  Unusual for him.  Likewise unusual, his shyness didn't come packaged with a desire to act as obnoxious as possible to make up for it.  He really _was _tired.

"I'll have dinner for you in about half an hour," she said.  "How do you feel about pork chops?"

_Well, we hung out for a while, but then there was that period of estrangement..._  Aw fuck, he couldn't even scrape up the effort to smart off.  He said, "Yeah.  Sounds great."

"You look a little peaked, Logan.  Why don't you get settled.  Maybe lie down for a bit?"

Truth was, he didn't blame Veronica for a single thing.  Not one glib lie, not one betrayal.  He'd done a lot of damage to her himself.  This wasn't about Veronica versus Logan.  This was all about Lilly.  It was.  He would have done exactly the same in Veronica's place, to get what he wanted.  Resolution.  Justice.  He would have gone to the wall.  Veronica had gone there, all right. Just the way he would have. 

_Well, guess it's all about Instant Karma, now isn't it? How's it feel take the shit, instead of dishing it out for once?_

It felt like crap.  Understanding _why _it felt like crap was supposed to magically whisk away the hurt.  But, it didn't.  He hated her.  He'd given her everything he had to give.  Open hands, terrified, and going for it anyway, because he had to.  He knew this was it.  This was the moment when you said, "I've never felt this way before," and the girl didn't believe you, since this moment never happened.  Not in real life.  Not to him, not since Lilly, and never like this.  Lightning-fast and hammer-hard. Defying logic and common sense, like a rain of frogs or spontaneous human combustion, here it was.  Happening.  This was love.

He couldn't hide it.  She saw it, she knew it.  And, she'd slapped him down just like his father would have, because nothing makes you feel better about beating the shit out of somebody than when you know they won't lift a hand to stop you.  Well done, Veronica.

Logan crossed the room and opened the French doors, letting in the warm breeze and the symphony of cicadas and other night creatures he couldn't identify.  Sure enough, outside was a balcony.  It ran the length of the house, not even wide enough for a chair.  A widow's walk, exactly like at the Haunted Mansion.  He rested his arms on the rail and looked out over the dark yard, over the black paper cutouts of the neighboring houses, to the fading gray glow of the river below.  A few widows had probably walked this walk, back in Ye Olden Days.

"Hurry baa-aack," he murmured in a high, sing-song voice.  "Don't forget to bring your death certificate..."

Okay.  Out here in the dark, it wasn't funny.  It was creepy. 

Leaving the French doors open, Logan went back inside and sat on the bed.  He'd lie down for a little bit.  Good idea, Grandma.  Not sleep.  That would bring the dream.  Just rest.

He stretched out on top of the white quilt, which smelled faintly of cedar.  The mattress sank under his weight.  Cupped in the angle of the roof and the wall, the bed was a cozy retreat, and he could see why his mom had loved this room. 

The clock on the nightstand read eight twenty-five.  Five twenty-five, California time.  He turned his head, looking up at the beams that crossed the ceiling and he noticed that his mother, at some point in her young life, had carved into the unpainted wood:

Lynn + Michael

Logan smiled, and murmured, "Mom, you little minx."

He wondered who Michael was, what had become of him, why his mother hadn't married him.  If she had, then he, Logan, wouldn’t exist, which seemed like a small price to pay for his mother still being alive —  of course, he didn't know that she would be alive, or if she would have been happy, or if his father had made her happy at some point, before Baby Logan arrived and getting out of her marriage was a stickier proposition.  Or if she had stayed with the hope that she could change his father, save him, make everything turn out right, just like in the movies.  Well, she had gotten her Happily Ever After, The End, and speculation was pointless.  What was done, was done, and yet, still turning questions over in his head, Logan slid into sleep without a ripple.

***


	5. The Most Important Meal of the Day

Logan opened his eyes.  For a second he stared at his surroundings, fuzzy-headed, expecting to see his own bedroom in Neptune with his television and his stereo opposite the bed, not the French door and the slanted ceiling.  Then he remembered where he was.  Arkham, Massachusetts.  His grandparents' house.  He couldn't have slept very long.  Not long enough for a visit from The Coronado Bridge Club, anyway. 

Somebody (his grandmother, probably), had covered him with a light blanket, closed the French doors, and laid his suitcase across the cushy brown armchair next to the bookcase.  His backpack slumped beside the chair like a tired dog.  Logan looked at the clock on the nightstand.  Ten forty.

"Fuck."  He tossed off the blanket and sat up.  He was still in his clothes, except for his shoes.  He'd slept through dinner and... it was broad daylight.  He'd slept for fourteen hours.

"Fuck." This time, he laughed the word. 

And no dream.  He didn't remember dreaming anything.  He didn't remember falling asleep. 

Logan rolled out of bed and stripped off his wrinkled clothes, then pulled on a slightly-less-wrinkled tee shirt — (_And clean boxers, _he thought. _ Take note, Jeanette._) — and jeans from his suitcase.   He stomped his feet into his sneakers.  The mirror on the back of the bedroom door showed his hair poking up at various entertaining angles.  He didn't know where the bathroom was or which set of guest towels his grandma had set aside for him, but that was okay, that was fine, no problem.  All he wanted was to go downstairs and get something to eat.  He was starving.  He'd missed dinner, and he didn't want breakfast out of a liquor bottle. 

For the summer, anyhow.




_"Your mother has an excellent point."_

Was that what Lilly had meant?  If so, those guys at the Department of Cryptic Prophecies weren't even trying anymore.  Lilly had pointed out she was nothing more than a figment of Logan's own imagination, but come on.  He'd had better fortune cookies.  _You like Chinese Food (in bed). You will take a long journey (straight down).  Your lucky numbers are 4-8-15-16-23-42.  _

Lame-ass haunting?  Weird dream?  _An undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of an underdone potato.  There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are._

Speaking of which, breakfast. 

Logan opened the door of the bedroom and was startled by — he turned his head.  Nobody there.  An enormously fluffy tabby cat lay in a square of sunlight on the floor.  Nothing but that vanishing shadow at the edge of his vision. 

_That puts the kibosh on my sleep-deprivation theory_.

"Hey, cat.  You seen a blonde in a baby tee and short-shorts hanging around here?"

The cat (thankfully) did not answer him; merely stared with inscrutable green eyes.  Logan didn't like cats.  He wasn't afraid of them; he resented the way they always looked self-satisfied, as if they knew a secret human beings never would.

Logan went downstairs to the sunny kitchen, and there he found his grandmother already setting a napkin and silverware on the big wooden table.  Bacon sizzled in a skillet, and his stomach loudly announced that it was empty.

"Good morning, Logan." Grandma Isabel kissed him on the cheek.  "How many eggs?"

"Three over medium, please."

He sat down at the table, and his grandmother brought over a cup of coffee, a plate of butter and a jar of apple jelly.  A second later, the toaster popped.  Logan reached for the cow-shaped creamer already sitting on the table.  Even after a full night's sleep, all of this still felt completely surreal.  The cow creamer wasn't helping.

"You're so thin," his grandmother tsked. "Don't they feed you at home?"

"Every other Tuesday, just like clockwork."

She put a stack of toast and a dish of fruit in front of him.  "Eat."

"How did ever I manage without you, Grandma?"

"You're sadly overdue for some grandmothering, if you ask me," she replied tartly. 

Logan laughed, then asked, "So, where's Grandpa James? Gone golfing?"

"Working at the university."

"He told me the students all went home for the summer."

"They have, mostly — except for some of the grad students.  Your grandfather's writing a monograph." She paused, and then she glanced at the ceiling and recited, as if she'd been coached a few times by her husband,  "Everyday influences of aquatic deities on Phoenician and Philistine society."

"Whoa," Logan declared. "Specific much?"

Grandma Isabel took a carton of eggs out of the fridge. "Well, this is for an academic community, you know.  James can't just toss off _The Da Vinci Code_ and expect his colleagues to take it seriously."

"He's gotta show he's got game."

His grandmother cracked three eggs into a skillet.  "Precisely."

The big tabby cat swaggered into the kitchen like Han Solo walking into the Mos Eisely Cantina, and shot Logan a long and measuring look that clearly said, "Fuck you, monkey."  Then it sprang silently up onto the windowsill and settled itself in for a nice, long stakeout of the neighborhood.

"Grandma Isabel," Logan said, "can I ask you a question? Seriously?"

"Of course." 

"How come you and my father don't get along?"

"Ah, well... I can't say I wasn't expecting _that_ question."  Grandma Isabel cast Logan a wry look over her shoulder that reminded Logan very much of Jeanette.

"He didn't even want you or Grandpa James at mom's memorial," Logan added.

"No," his grandmother sighed.  "And I'm sorry, for your sake."

"Wasn't your fault," Logan said.  "I know that.  I don't blame you."

"We wanted to be there for you.  Then, as well as last year, when your girlfriend Lilly was killed.  I wish we could have done more for you."

"I knew it was over," Logan said.  "The day it happened.  I knew we'd never get back together, but I..." He concentrated on spackling his toast with a heavy coat of butter and jelly.  "I wouldn't have appreciated either visit, anyway.  I was too drunk." 

_You're absolutely determined to fuck this up, aren't you?_ he thought.  _Trash it out of sheer assholery, just like you trash everything good.  _

He glanced up, eyes narrowed.  Dared her to say something.

"I can't really blame you," Grandma Isabel replied.  Then she laughed a little.  "I suppose that's because I'm your grandmother, and not your mother.  You're not so very different from Lynnie.  Trouble followed her like a tin can tied to a dog's tail."

On another occasion, Logan might have smiled at this analogy, entirely too apt in his case.  But, he'd been so firmly convinced he'd get the, "I expected more of you.  I'm very disappointed, young man!" lecture, that it took him a second to realize his grandmother wasn't upset with him.  She didn't even seem surprised.  He shifted his focus to his toast again.

"And if you're trying to shock me," Grandma Isabel added gently, "try harder.  I taught high school in Newburyport for twenty-three years.  AP English.  I've seen plenty of teenage despair."

Logan's mouth twitched.

"Ah-_hah,_" she said softly, catching the smile.  "You know I'm not making light of what's happened to you, Logan."

"Yeah, I know that."

"I just want you to understand that I don't expect you to be on your best behavior."

Logan lifted his head and exclaimed with mock dismay, "Grandma... this _is_ my best behavior!"

"Well, I've seen worse," she replied. "At least you've got your napkin in your lap."

Grandma Isabel flipped the eggs from the frying pan to a plate, added a mountainous heap of bacon and two giant slices of tomato, and then she brought it over and set it beside the toast.  She leaned down to kiss Logan on the temple, wrapping him briefly in her embrace and in the faint sweetness of her perfume, which (thank God) didn't smell at all like the custom blends his mother had continually brought back from France.

"Eat your breakfast," she said.

He started on the eggs, and his grandmother sat down at the table with her cup of coffee. 

"James and I were dead-set against Evelynn marrying your father," she said.  "She was already working in Hollywood, getting parts in movies.  Oh, we were both busting our buttons about it. Our little Lynn, a famous actress.  You know how parents love to compete with each other over whose kid is smarter or has the better job, or the most babies.  Well, Logan..." His grandmother waved one hand at him, airily.  "I held the trump card at every single church social and supermarket meet-up.  Muriel Derby had a _cardiologist _for a son, and there still wasn't a mother in Arkham with better bragging rights than I had."

Logan laughed.  He could easily imagine his grandmother lah-dee-dah-ing Lynn Lester's success all over town.  His father was fond of doing exactly the same thing with him, though of course,  Aaron Echolls wasn't exactly motivated by paternal pride.

Grandma Isabel went on,  "At the same time, your grandfather and I did hold out a hope that Evelynn would get tired of Los Angeles, and come home. We missed her.  Then she met Aaron, and your grandfather... I'm not terribly proud of this, and neither is he, but... James offered Aaron a large amount of money to stay away from our daughter."

"How much money?"

"Fifteen thousand dollars."

Logan gave a low whistle.  "Nice chunk of change."

"At the time," Grandma Isabel said,  "I'm sure Aaron could have used it.  But, he told James to go to hell.  I think that gave your father all the justification he needed to separate us from Evelynn.  I also think it pushed her right into his arms.  Perhaps if we hadn't tried to interfere...  I don't know.  Perhaps it was already too late."

"Why didn't you want him marrying mom?"

"I'd like to tell you it was because we knew how he would turn out.  It isn't true.  We were..." She shook her head slightly.  "What happened with Lilly Kane was shocking."

"Yeah, that's putting it mildly."

"I feel so selfish asking you to come and spend the summer in Arkham," his grandmother said quietly, apropos of nothing.

"Huh?"

"I hoped you would want to get away from Neptune.  I offered because I knew that for once, Aaron Echolls couldn't prevent you from coming here.  I just..." She sighed and shrugged one shoulder. "I feel a bit guilty, that's all.  As if I'd tricked you."

Logan frowned.  "So, if it wasn't just to give me an escape hatch, why _did_ you ask me to come here? You'd never even met me."

"You just answered your own question, Logan.  I wanted to see you."

"I'm not ten years old.  I'm not..." _Smart, brave, innocent, admirable, entirely sane — hey, pick one.  _"... a little kid anymore."

"You're not a grown man, either.  And I don't mean that to sound as though I still think of you as a little kid."

"You mean I'm not set in my ways," Logan replied.  "You can still mold me and shape me.  Erase my father's evil influence, and teach me I'm worth saving."

Grandma Isabel's mouth curved wryly. "Lynn always said you were too clever.  Bright as a new button.  Yes.  That's what I meant.  Not quite so condescending, but that's essentially it."

The only thing I've ever excelled at is being the most hated student at Neptune High, three years running." Logan raised both index fingers over his head. "Yeah! Go, Number One!"




"Logan..."

"You don't know who I am.  If you did, I wouldn't be sitting here.  I'd be on the stoop waiting for a taxi, and I am trying really hard not to screw this up, Grandma, because I've got no place else to go.  So, this'll work out a lot better if you leave it alone and just... just leave it."

"If that's what you want," she said, and then neither of them said anything.

Logan mashed his egg yolks with his fork, listening to the sharp-edged silence.  Or, maybe only his side had the sharp edge.  His grandmother poured cream in her coffee, and stirred it, her expression as inscrutable as her cat's.  She didn't do what Logan wanted.  She was like Weevil.  He couldn't get a rise out of either one.  Except Weevil just flicked him away like a buzzing insect.  That was incredibly irritating. Red-haze-seeing, berserker-making.  Even Duncan didn't listen to him half the time.  Logan started assing around and Duncan's eyes turned inward and opaque, shutting him out.  Grandma Isabel didn't dismiss Logan, and there was the difference.  She paid attention to what he said.  As if he actually had something worthwhile to say.  Her Magical Grandma Powers obviously rendered her invulnerable to levels of bullshit that would slay ordinary mortals.

Logan poked the tomato out of the way with his fork; the slices were so big and velvety red, they looked like the vine had sprouted next to a nuclear power plant. 

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" his grandmother exclaimed, sounding at the same time exasperated and not actually pissed off at all.  "Eat your vegetables.  They won't kill you."

"They look radioactive," Logan protested. "And a tomato's a fruit, F.Y.I."

"Don't sass your grandma.  Eat your radioactive fruit."

"Yes, ma'am." Logan tucked into his breakfast, smiling.  He was indifferent to tomatoes, but these, well... the plutonium added a certain _je ne sais quoi_; they were actually pretty good.

Grandma Isabel sipped her coffee, and then she set down the cup, cradling it between her hands.  "Your grandfather and I didn't think Aaron Echolls would amount to anything.  He was an actor.  He wasn't good enough for Evelynn.  He wouldn't be able to support her; she could barely support herself.  But, that wasn't entirely the reason."  She paused for a moment, looking past Logan.  "Aaron is an outsider.  Small towns... _old _towns, like Arkham... we hold onto our traditions."

Logan looked at his grandmother and he suddenly saw why James Lester had married her.  Right then, she had a secret look.  A looking-beyond look.  A _fey_ look.  Here was his SAT prep class not being a total waste of his Saturday mornings, after all.  Who woulda thunk it?  His mother had had that look, once upon a time.  He'd glimpsed in the movies she'd made before _Pursuit of Happiness_, that ironically-named movie where she'd met his father.  He'd never put two and two together.  Girls with sexy bedroom eyes? Throw a rock in L.A., and you'll hit one.  But, that look — witchy, otherworldly, faintly unsettling — that look had made Lynn Lester famous.  That look had made Aaron Echolls turn down fifteen thousand dollars.  In the moment it took Logan to realize this, the look on Isabel Lester's face disappeared like a dove up a magician's sleeve, and his grandmother was just his grandmother again. 

"We keep our secrets," she added. "We don't share them, save with kin.  Do you take my meaning?"

"I guess," Logan said, still slightly weirded out, as if the room had tilted several degrees.  And then he got what she meant.  "Me.  I'm kin.  So... what? I get the behind-the-scenes tour?"

"If you're sure you _want_ the behind-the-scenes tour," Grandma Isabel said. "You know what they say about curiosity and cats."

"Go ahead, Grandma.  Kill me."

His grandmother snorted.  "All right.  My maiden name is Marsh.  My family comes from Innsmouth, a small seaport about six miles northeast of Arkham."

Logan snapped his fingers.  "I saw a guy at the airport.  John Ross told me to stay away from Innsmouth people.  As if he knew."

"Sometimes it's obvious," Grandma Isabel replied.  "It's called The Innsmouth Look.  The narrow head, the bulging eyes.  It's a genetic disorder."

"From inbreeding?" Logan asked, and took a bite of toast.

"They swim into the ocean and drown themselves."




Toast stuck to the roof of Logan's mouth.  He wasn't thinking about his mother.  He was thinking about the dreams that had driven him from the warm twilight of constant shitfacedness into the cold glare of sobriety.  His heart seemed to have wedged somewhere up between his ears; his pulse thundered in his head.

"Or they jump off a bridge," he said tightly.

"I didn't say that," his grandmother replied.  "Lynn..."

"That's why you really didn't want my father to marry her. My mom had this... this... thing.  And I've got it, too.  You didn't want her to pass it on."

"We didn't want her to marry someone who wouldn't understand her.  But, Aaron loved her.  And he took her away from Arkham."

"Bullshit."

"Watch your language, Logan."

"Look, I'm sorry, but —"

"You asked me a question and I gave you an answer.  You're only one quarter Marsh. Your father's people come from... I don't even know where."

"Michigan."

"How far back?"

Logan shrugged.  "No clue.  My father never talks about his family."

"Well," his grandmother said, with a little, superior sniff,  "it doesn't matter.  I doubt you're in any danger."

"I dream about it," he insisted.  "The bridge, the water..."

"I'm not surprised, considering what happened."

"No." Logan laid down his fork.  "I mean _all_ the time.  Every single night, I jump.  Just like she jumped.  And sometimes my mom..." His brain shoved that thought away with terrified speed.  "Sometimes there are mermaids.  And cities.  Sometimes I hear this big iron bell ringing, and it's coming from under the water.  You know, I haven't been completely sober since... God, I don't even know.  I can't drink legally, and I've got a drinking problem_.  _Except in July, I up and jumped on the wagon, because it was the only way I could think of to stop that fucking dream — sorry." He held up a hand. "Sorry.  It's just... it's... "

Logan trailed off.  His grandmother had gone very still.

"What?" he said.

Grandma Isabel opened her mouth.  Logan clearly saw her getting ready to lie to him — and then she stopped.  She glanced at the tablecloth, back to him; she looked both concerned and a little frightened.  "I never should have told you."

"Why did you?"

"Because... " She lifted one hand, then let it fall.  "The Marsh family still carries a stigma.  Just because of who they were.  James and I didn't want Lynn to marry the first man who came along and promised her an escape from her heritage.  And that's all, Logan.  I promise you.  The Innsmouth Disorder almost never surfaces now.  The inbred strain is dying out.  Even in Innsmouth.  Your mother killed herself.  Only that.  Or... that's what I believed."

"Now you think maybe she did it because of this disorder-thing?"

"I don't know, Logan.  I hope to God she did not."

He gave a startled, harsh laugh.  "You'd rather she killed herself because my father and I made her life absolute Hell?"

"Did you dream last night?"

He blinked. "No.  Last night was the first decent sleep I've gotten in a month. Why?"

Grandma Isabel laid her hand over Logan's.  "If I tell you that I believe your mother killed herself for no better reason than that she didn't want to live anymore, and if I tell you that you are better off accepting both the explanation and the blame, even if it's misplaced — will it do any good?"

_Don't dig, and leave the devil alone._

"No," Logan said.

***


	6. Booty Call

The screen door banged, startling both Logan and his grandmother.  Logan hadn't even realized there was an outside door at the other end of the kitchen.  He tipped back in his chair and looked toward what he'd assumed was a pantry, but in fact was a small foyer full of fishing gear, a bag of golf clubs leaning against the wall, and several pairs of winter boots.  Past that, a screen door led to the back yard. Through the screen, Logan could see John Ross' Huffy dirt bike dumped on the lawn half under a hydrangea bush, the front wheel still spinning.  John Ross himself was industriously wiping his feet on the rubber doormat.

Grandma Isabel stood up as the boy entered the kitchen. "Good morning, John Ross."

"Morning, Grandma. Hi, Logan."

"Hey."

"Morning, Charlemagne," John Ross said to the tabby, who yawned imperiously.

"John Ross, would you like some breakfast?" Grandma Isabel asked.

"Sure, thanks." his cousin parked himself at the table.  "And black coffee, please."

"Nice try." She set down a glass of orange juice in front of John Ross, who didn't look especially disappointed.

John Ross turned to Logan.  "Oh, Jeanette wanted me to ask you if you'd washed your underpants yet."

"Excuse me?" Grandma Isabel sounded appalled and at the same time like she was trying hard not to laugh.

"Tell her I've been wearing this one pair for six months straight," Logan said.  "I wanna see if they'll actually fall apart."

"You should find out what the Guinness World Record is," John Ross replied. "You could be famous."

"Excellent idea," Logan said and tucked into his breakfast again. 

He knew Grandma Isabel had told him all she was going to tell.  Even if he bugged her.  Even if he took a page from The Book of Veronica, and _literally _bugged her.  Maybe there was nothing more to tell.  Maybe his grandmother was only worried about handing him an easy excuse to kill himself.  Like he needed one.  Been there.  Hadn't done that.

And, okay.  Yes, he desperately needed a reason, any reason, any explanation, however bizarre, for his mother's death, for his own fucked-up head.  Something to make him go, "Oh, of course.  Everything makes perfect sense now." Some conclusion other than Emotionally Destroyed, because that conclusion had no nobility, no narrative roundness.  That conclusion meant his father had won.  When you came right down to it, that conclusion royally sucked. 

"Are you doing anything later?" John Ross asked in that same carefully careless tone he'd used when he'd invited Logan to go swimming the previous day.

"Don't know," Logan replied. "What's there to do around here?"

"Well..." John Ross said to his glass of orange juice, "sometimes I go down to the caves and excavate for pirate treasure."

Grandma Isabel made a noise somewhere between a hiss and a cluck of disapproval, and set down a plate of buttered toast in front of John Ross.  "Those caves are dangerous. Derelicts camp there."

"Logan's big.  He's almost a grown-up," John Ross replied cagily.  "He can look out for me."

"Pirate treasure, huh?" Logan said.

"It's not a make-believe game.  There really were pirates here in the fifteenth century, like Captain Obed Marsh." John Ross nodded at Grandma Isabel.  "We're related to him on one side."

Logan caught his grandmother's eye briefly. "So I've heard."

"Also there were smugglers and bootleggers in the 1920s," John Ross continued.  "Sometimes I find things other kids have buried.  There's always Indian arrowheads and stuff.  Peter Shepley said he found a human jawbone, but I don't believe him.  He's a tremendous liar.  Anyway, it's fun."

"Okay," Logan said.  "Why not?"

They set off a little while after breakfast with John Ross carrying a couple of garden spades and Logan carrying the lunch Grandma Isabel had reluctantly packed for them in his backpack.  The day was fine and not too humid, with a scattering of mare's tail clouds in the blue sky.  Logan felt a low-grade anxiety, almost like agoraphobia.  He wasn't sure who he was supposed to be.  Spending the summer in Europe or Mexico, drunkenly fucking a succession of lithe girls who didn't speak English (hey, no problem, since he'd _failed_ English), and partying until he passed out.  That's where he belonged.  Walking to the river, down the center line of a deserted country road, to spend the day digging pirate treasure with his nine year-old cousin — how the hell did that fit any pre-designed Logan Echolls Template? 

"Logan?"

"Yeah?"

"I realize I may be overstepping myself," John Ross said in a decorous tone that made Logan wonder if Uncle John might be a lawyer.  "We haven't known each other very long."

"What do you want to know?"

"Nothing.  I don't mean it like that.  If you want to talk about anything, you can talk to me.  If you want." 

"Well, thanks, John Ross."

His cousin gave him a measuring look.  "I know you think since you're older, you have to be in charge of me, and make sure I have fun.  But, you don't.  I know really bad things happened to you. You don't have to entertain me.  You can stay in bed all day, if you want.  You can do whatever you want." John Ross pushed his Patriots cap back a bit on his head, as if squaring himself up for a tough job.  "If you want to talk to somebody, you can talk to me.  I'm not like the adults.  I don't have agendas."

Logan smiled, a little sardonically.  "You got my back, huh?"

"But, sometimes it helps to tell things to somebody, so they're out of your head."  

"You don't want me talking about this."




"Probably not," his cousin replied.  "That's less important than if you need to talk, though."

"I don't even know where to start."

His cousin halted in the middle of Boundary Road.  There hadn't been a car for twenty minutes.  Asphalt had petered out some distance back, and now the road was half-gravel, half sandy dirt.  Grass and wildflowers had sprung up in the center, as if Arkham didn't make much effort to stop Nature from reclaiming her territory.

"Start anywhere," John Ross said.

"It's just..." Logan held up his hands. "It's too much."

His cousin was silent.

"Last month," Logan began slowly, "I climbed up on the railing of the Coronado Bridge.  The same bridge my mom jumped from.  I was all ready to jump, just like she did.  She left me.  Everybody... fucking leaves me." 

A black-red veil descended on his vision.  This awful, awful thing inside of him; this werewolf, bloody chops and lolling tongue, gorging itself on his heart — drunk was the silver that held it at bay, drunk was the calendar thirty-one days, not one of them marked Full Moon.  He had not been drunk in weeks, in lifetimes.

"I'm not enough. I'm _never_ enough.  I should've just fucking jumped.  It's not like anybody would've fucking cared.  Maybe the guy down at the liquor store, after he saw how much it cut into his profits.  I didn't even know about my father and Lilly yet.  I found out the next day.  They were fucking each other.  My girlfriend was fucking the older, richer, better version of me.  The upgrade.  And he killed her.  She's stepping out on me, and _he_ kills her.  And nobody even thought about pulling me aside and saying — Hey! Maybe you should sit down, Logan. We got some really bad news, Logan.  Brace yourself, Logan. We want you to hear it from a friend before you — oh, I don't know — turn on CNN and hear it that way.  And now I just can't.  I can't, I..." 

Logan took a deep, shaky breath.  _I can't believe I just said that to a nine year-old.  _ _Just put a bullet right there, somebody. Please._

Instead, he felt John Ross take his hand and tug gently.  He followed his cousin to the verge of the road and sank down in the long grass and Queen Anne's lace growing by the fieldstone wall.  It was cool and dimly green under the spreading trees.

"Shit, I'm sorry. I'm sorry..."

"Uh-uh," his cousin cut him off.  "Go ahead.  You'll feel better.  There's nobody here 'cept me, and I'm not going to tell."  He added gently,  "It's okay, Logan."

He hadn't. Not really. Not even with Veronica.  There was already that tension between them like a hot, singing wire, and this wasn't a side of him he wanted her to see, not now, not yet, not ever, never mind how incredible, how exquisitely sweet and safe it felt to be in Veronica's arms  — _God, finally!_ he'd thought — it flashed like a bright fishtail in the churning current of his horror and grief after Trina broke him in a hundred pieces right there in the lobby of the Sunset Regent.  Casually, like she'd knocked a vase off a table while putting on her coat.  But, Veronica was so strong, on the ball, rock-steady, ready with a snarky comment; slick, prickly, indestructible Veronica.  He stood up.  As soon as he could.  Shook it off, took the punch. 

This was different.  This had been a long time coming, building up like thunderheads, and he was too fucking tired of fighting to stop it.  Logan put his head down on his knees and cried.  He was aware of John Ross sitting beside him, one hand across his back.  After a little while, his tears stopped, but Logan stayed huddled in crash position.  Head down, nose stuffed up, eyes sticky and squinty.  John Ross was right.  He felt better.  Worn out, lightheaded, and a little shaky, but better.  Like he'd vomited up something poisonous. 

He heard John Ross stand up and move a few steps away to crackle around in the underbrush by the stone wall.  He wondered what his cousin was up to, but he couldn't muster enough energy to sit up straight or look around, until John Ross touched him on the arm. 

"Here."

Logan turned his head. John Ross held out a handful of blackberries.  Logan extended his own hand and John Ross tipped the blackberries into his palm.

"Thanks," Logan said.

"Watch out for ants," John Ross advised him.

He sat down again beside Logan.  His Patriots cap was half full of blackberries.  Without it, his dark blond hair was as spiky as Logan's own. 

They sat and ate the plump, sweet berries in comfortable silence until their fingers and tongues turned purple.

_I could live here, _Logan thought.  _Buy a little house and get a job hauling lobster traps or writing porn, and I'd fall victim to the Innsmouth curse, and someday I'd head out in my boat and never return, and they would all ask themselves,  Whatever became of Logan Echolls, Hideous Fish Man and Dirty Underpants Champ? The End._

When the blackberries were gone, Logan and John Ross picked up their gear and continued down Boundary Road, which twined through fields and groves of trees, emerging with startling suddenness on a vista of the Miskatonic River, now sparkling blue-gray in the late morning sun.  Waves slupped gently against a sloping shelf of shale and rounded rocks and crushed clam shells.  The Miskatonic wasn't very wide.  Logan could see Arkham on the other side: a high trestle bridge and a scatter of factories along a street running parallel to the edge of the water.

On their side, it was all summer houses.  Floats bobbing out in the water, narrow docks.  Then the ground began to rise, leaving the houses behind,  until it was a steep hill with a fringe of greenery like a receding hairline along the top edge.  A jetty of huge, rounded boulders pointed into the water.  The rocks were laced with crackly dried kelp and tiny clamshells; stands of tall eel grass sprouted up between them.  Logan's sneaker crunched on something and he bent to free his foot from a dark brown empty carapace with a ridge of small spines and a spike tail: an empty horseshoe crab shell.

"Man, that's too bad," John Ross said.  "That was a big one."

Here, the hill became a  stark, rumpled sheet of earth and stone sheering up from the narrow beach.  Several dark openings pierced the cliff-side.  The pirate caves.  Logan grinned and followed John Ross, as his cousin clambered over the rocks and hiked up the beach.

"We can't swim here," John Ross announced. "There's an undertoad."

Logan laughed as the image sprang to his mind: a gigantic, bloated, ancient and evil toad beneath the water, lurking in wait for unwary swimmers.  "Undertow," he corrected his cousin.  "It's a fast current under the surface of the water."

"You go ahead and think what you want."

"Trust me.  There is no such thing as an under_toad_."

"Maybe not in Cali-_fornia_," John Ross mimicked him, and continued across the beach to the base of the cliff.  He slid the two garden spades down the back of his shirt, pushing the handles down into the waistband of his jeans.  Logan thought he was a sure bet to bonk himself in the head with the blade of one or both shovels — but then again, Logan wasn't the cliff-scaling expert.

"Come on, Logan!" John Ross beckoned to Logan and started to climb.

Logan put both arms through the straps of his backpack and trotted up the beach to the base of the cliff.  Once he got going, the climb wasn't quite as daunting as it had looked from below.  The hillside had plenty of rocky outcrops, protruding roots and tufts of wiry grass to grab.  It was like scaling the rock wall at the gym.  Even so, by the time John Ross' sneakers disappeared through one of the dark openings, Logan was sweaty and winded.  His cousin had picked almost the highest cave in the cliff-side.  The only opening higher was about as big as a dinner plate.  Not very practical for exploring.  Or, maybe it was actually a burrow for some large, flying creature that preyed on undertoads and man-eating cows. He looked around at the various inscriptions.




_Fuck You! _(Sticking with a classic.)_  B.R.+ P.T. 4EVER!!!  Suck My Cock._ (This one included a helpful illustration.) _Dennis Wuz Here, 1975.  I Saw Brown Jenkin.  _(Directly below, another hand had written: _I See Dead People!_) _ Miskatonic Football ROOLZ!_

"I'm not supposed to be all the way up here," John Ross said.  "My mom is convinced I'll fall and break my neck.  Don't tell her, okay?"

"I got your back," Logan replied.

John Ross grinned hugely.  He really could not have picked a worse person to idolize, but Logan was not about to tell him that.  He liked John Ross.  Logan pulled his cigarettes and his mother's gold lighter out of his back pocket, and walked the entrance of the cave.

"No wait," John Ross said.

"I'll help you in a little bit."

As Logan sat down with his feet dangling down the cliff wall, John Ross came up behind him and laid his small hands over Logan's eyes.

"Don't look."

"Okay.  I'm not looking at what, now?"

"Witch Island."

"Which island?"

"I'm not in _kindergarten,"_ John Ross said, irritated.

"Sorry, man."

"To your left.  There's standing stones on the island that the Druids put up, or somebody."

"Pirates?"

"Maybe.  Anyway, there's this fortune-telling game.  You look at the stones for the first time, and whatever you see, predicts your future."

"What if I don't see anything?  That means I'm gonna die horribly, right?"

"Everybody sees something.  Come on.  Ready?"

"Sure," Logan replied dubiously.

John Ross lifted his hands off Logan's eyes.  From his high vantage, Logan saw the small island in the middle of the river, and the tumble of dark gray, rough-hewn blocks.  Four of them stood parallel, and then another one slanted off to the side. 

"It's a tower," Logan said. "Falling down." If he added in the scraggly, dead tree, it looked like lightning was striking the top.  Bad news for the tenants.  "Well?"

"Well what?"

"What's it mean?"

"I don't know," John Ross said. "It's your tower."

"You're not very good at this, you know."

"Not everybody can be," his cousin replied reasonably.

"No, I guess not."

"Find anything?"




"Nope."  John Ross didn't sound disappointed. "Wanna help?"

"Everybody's already dug up everything worth finding, you know."

"I don't know that.  Neither do you."

Logan's mouth curved. "Okay, I don't," he admitted.  "But, you gotta admit, that's the most likely scenario."

"Being likely isn't the same thing as being true.  Maybe everybody else hasn't dug deep enough.  We could find something totally wicked pissah."

Logan got up to a crouch, spanked grit off the seat of his jeans, and went to the rear of the cave, picking up one of the shovels.  "If we find any bootleg liquor, I call dibs."

They spent the next couple hours engaged in the marvelously pointless exercise of digging the deepest possible hole in the dirt floor of the cave — something Logan hadn't done since he was John Ross's age.  By the time they broke for lunch, their excavation was a good three feet around and about two feet deep.  The only treasures they'd turned up were a few bent nails and a flint arrowhead.  They ate their coldcut sandwiches, drank their warm Cokes, and admired their handiwork. 

"Spread out?" Logan asked.  "Start a grid system, like an archaeological dig?  Or go deeper?"

John Ross considered the question, chewing thoughtfully. "Dig deeper," he said.

They resumed the excavation after lunch, with their shirts tied around their heads, coolie-fashion. Logan hadn't dug too far before the blade of his shovel plinked on something not a rock.

"Hey, I found something.  Don't know if it's wicked pissah." He chucked the shovel aside and hunkered down, brushing dirt off the glint of buried green.

"Lemme see."

John Ross scooched over as Logan dug the object out with his fingers, working it free from the clods of dirt and clinging tree roots.  It was a cloudy, scuffed glass bottle with a faded, peeling paper label that featured an ink drawing of a voluptuous, bare-breasted mermaid with marcelled hair and a necklace of starfishes.  Nothing else on the label.  The bottle had a wax plug, and when Logan tilted it to take a better look, something clinked against the glass.  He and John Ross grinned at one another.

Logan dug out the wax with his pocket knife and up-ended the bottle.  A key skated out of the bottle neck and dropped into his hand.  Antique and as long across as his palm, the key had an ornate fob and square teeth. It was impossible to tell what kind of metal it had been, since now it was entirely black.  Too big to fit any ordinary door, it was a key forged for some formidable lock in Narnia or Mordor.

"Wicked pissah," John Ross declared.

***


	7. Locked Mess Monsters

The first thing Logan did was try the key in the lock of the crawlspace door.  He knew it wouldn't fit.  And, it didn't.  It wouldn't go in the lock of the roll-top desk, either, but he found that key inside a little china basket on top of the desk.  The inside of the desk proved disappointingly empty.  Despite the weird coincidence of his digging discovery and the dream where Lilly had delivered her warning, the likelihood of him finding the lock which fit the Mordor-sized key was astronomically tiny.  He realized that.  But, he tucked the key in the back pocket of his jeans.  Just in case.

He'd been too tired to think about it yesterday evening, but right now that locked crawlspace really bugged him.

_You're getting bored,_ he thought.  _Just like Grandpa James  predicted.  There's nothing behind that door except dust and mice turds.  _

On the other hand, he'd also thought there'd be nothing left to find in the pirate cave, and he'd been wrong about that.  The mermaid bottle now sat on the nightstand, refracting a cloudy lozenge of green light on the far wall of the bedroom.

Logan sat down tinker-fashion on the braided rug in front of the hobbit door and placed his hands palm-up on his knees, his fingertips together.  _Focus, Grasshopper. I know this is almost too ghastly even to contemplate, but... what would Veronica Mars do?  _He narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, then he tilted his head Veronicawise.  "_Hey.  I need a favor..."_

"Veronica would pick the lock."

The only thing wrong with this bit of MacGuyvery was that the crawlspace lock was the old-fashioned type: round at the top, with a slot below.  From what he'd gathered about lock-picking (admittedly, not much), newer locks required two picks.  One pick to catch the row of little pins that dropped down and fit into the grooves in the key, and another pick to turn the cylinder at the same time.  The old-fashioned key from the mermaid bottle and the old-fashioned key to the roll-top desk both had a hollow barrel, with a single notched prong sticking up on the end.  This suggested to him that the crawlspace lock probably had one horizontal pin, and something completely different going on with the key teeth.  Logan closed his eyes.

"Veronica, Veronica, Veronica would..."

The image that came to his mind was not of Veronica, but of Lilly, curled up next to him on the couch in the Kane living room. Logan had been trying really hard to fall asleep, except Lilly kept poking him in the ribs every time she caught him nodding off.

"It's good," she insisted.  "It's romantic.  Just pay attention."

"Please, Lilly. For the love of God.  Turn it off.  You've seen this movie twenty times."

"I have not."

Logan stood up; Lilly yanked him back down by one of his belt-loops and he collapsed on the couch into her lap.  On screen, a white-haired actor hustled down the stairs to the cellar, the maids all gabbling about Signore da Vinci we can't unlock the door and Drew Barrymore can't go to the ball it's the end of the world oh my God freak out!

"Okay, why is Leonardo da Vinci in _Cinderella_?  Where's the singing mice?"

Lilly pinched him on the arm, not very hard.

"Ow!"

"Quiet, you big baby."

Da Vinci pulled the pins from the hinges on the door's other side, muttering, "I shall go down in history as the man who opened a door."  And the door popped open, freeing Drew Barrymore, hooray, the end; at last our long nightmare is over!  Except it had gone on for _hours _after that.

Logan opened his eyes and pulled out his pocket-knife.  He thought he'd make quick work of the door hinges, but he was wrong about that, too.  Several layers of paint and rust covered the screws.  It was almost dinner time when he finally got the hinges unscrewed on one side.  Scraped knuckles and a crick in his shoulder attested to his lack of handyman skills, and Grandma Isabel was probably wondering what he was up to, since he'd been so unnaturally quiet over the past few hours.

After all twelve goddamned labors of Hercules to get the fucking hinges off, the door only opened halfway before the bolt stopped it.  Lilly's stupid chick flick had lied about da Vinci getting doors open and freeing princesses.  But, as Logan's grandmother had pointed out that morning, Logan was skinny.  He wriggled through the half-open door, scraping his back as he crammed himself into the crawlspace.   His hand came down on something hard that stamped its small shape into his palm.

"Ouch."

Logan shifted his weight, sitting down on one hip and picking up the little object.  It was a key.  Another loose key.  A quick check of the crawlspace lock confirmed where this key fit.  Somebody had deliberately locked the crawlspace, then poked the key in through a crack in the door.  But, his grandmother had been right.  The crawlspace was empty.  Logan lay back, propped up on his elbows, half in and half out of the crawlspace, sweat trickling between his shoulder blades and stinging his scraped skin.  It almost didn't matter that there was nothing in here except cobwebs and dust, since he'd done what he'd set out to do. 

People bitched about that all the time.  Teachers, guidance counselors, both of his parents_...  Logan does not apply himself.  Logan is inattentive.  Logan spends four hours getting into an empty crawlspace for no other reason than there is a locked door in his way.  Logan focuses single-minded determination on tasks which are utterly pointless, yet fails to focus the same determination on his schoolwork — which he obviously considers equally pointless._

"Logan is the sound of one hand clapping," said Logan.

Except, now there was this mystery of why somebody would lock up an empty crawlspace and drop the key back inside.  He pulled the lighter out of his pocket, flicked the lid and spun the wheel, so he could get a better look around.  On a shelf formed by a protruding crossbeam sat a small, dusty metal box.

"Well, fuck me."  Second jackpot of the day.  Why the hell was he not in Vegas with this luck?

_Who says it's good luck?_

Logan worked the lid off the box.  It didn't want to come loose.  He had time to imagine a stash of letters inside, faintly scented with French perfume.

_Dear Logan, Please forgive me.  Dear Logan, I didn't want to leave you.  Dear Logan, I faked my own death.  Meet me at —_

"Don't," he told himself. "God, just don't."

The lid popped off and a faint odor of fake strawberry puffed out.  No letters.  Instead, a pile of black and white four-by-six photos, badly yellowed and water-damaged.  And a single Polaroid, which had likewise seen better days.  Along the white bottom part was a smeared, illegible pen-scrawl.  The photo itself was blurry.  He wondered why his mother had bothered to not only save this, but hide it.  Taken at night, the Polaroid showed a fuzzy chunk of somebody's red-jacketed shoulder in the foreground, then the side of a boat, black water beyond, and in the water, ghost-pale from the flash was... what the hell was that?  Maybe he was looking at it wrong.  Logan tilted the photo sideways.  No.  He'd been right.  Jacket.  Boat.  He could see a cleat with a rope knotted around it.  Water.  And then a person? A fish?

_A mermaid?_

"Shut up," he muttered.

He brought the box out to the widow's walk where the light was better, and started leafing through the old black-and-whites.

Each one was captioned along the bottom in white, where someone had written on the negatives, not the photographs.  The negatives themselves lay in the bottom of the box, but when he picked them up, the whole pile crumbled into gritty fragments. 

The first photo showed a group of grim-faced men with rifles and the caption read, _2/11/28.  _Several pictures of sullen-looking individuals followed.  These people all looked related to Gareth, with their sloped shoulders, flat faces and narrow skulls.  Innsmouth natives, without a doubt.

After that were photographs taken at night, showing various run-down buildings, mostly warehouses.  In Innsmouth?  Probably.  One photograph showed a section of a town square, and half a white church.  Neat, set back among boxwood hedges, obscurely _off_ somehow.  A plaque over the door, cut off by the edge of the photograph, read,

teric

der of

gon

The next night shot showed two men in biballs and cloth caps with rifles slung over their shoulders, standing out in stark relief from the harsh glare of the flash.  A bloodhound stood beside them and, stretched on the ground was a... something.  About the size of a man, the thing had two arms and two legs, both ending in powerfully clawed and webbed... hands and feet? Paws?  Its head looked like a cross between a fish and a frog. The mouth gawped open, showing several rows of sharp teeth, the tongue lolled and the shark eyes stared dully.  Very obviously dead.

What bothered him the most was that the sea monster wore the tattered remains of a drop-waisted dress and a string of beads.  The hem of the dress was rucked up around the thing's hips, where the end of a thick tail protruded. The caption read, _Shot and killed off Devil Reef, 2/11/28.  _

Logan compared the black-and-white with the Polaroid.  Now that he had a frame of reference, it was impossible for him not to see that the thing in the water was the same as the dead thing.

It was an elaborate prank, like _The Blair Witch Project.  _That's what he tried telling himself, but if that was the case, these pranksters sucked at publicity.

The caption of this one simply said, _Inbrd, 2/11/28_




"Inbird," he said.  Then, "In_breed_.  Jesus Christ."

A couple more shots of uncooperative-looking (but living) Innsmouth fishermen, and two or three shots off the side of a boat showing blurry pale flashes in the water.  He could pick out enough detail to identify them as living versions of the dead things on the dock. 

The last photograph showed a wooden planked floor.  The boards were warped and splintered, an elaborate design drawn on them in what looked like chalk.  The design looked like some sort of alchemical or magical diagram, and the shadow of a fedora-wearing photographer fell diagonally across it.  Logan lifted the photo to get a better look.  It twitched.  He dropped it with a gasp, flicking it away as if he'd touched a slug. The photograph swooped through the air, hit the edge of the French door and fluttered to the floor of the widow's walk.

Logan shuddered and slid the photo quickly back in the pile.




He lit a cigarette and smoked it, frowning at the small stack of photos.  What had his grandmother said that morning?  That people with what she'd so politely termed "The Innsmouth Disorder" became obsessed with the ocean, then swam out and drowned themselves.  Or, they became those fish-frog things.  Apparently, they didn't just go live peacefully under the sea, under the sea; darling, it's better, down where it's wetter, take it from me.  No.  For some reason they were gunned down by a party of armed men.  It was a good bet the reason involved that design on the floorboards.

This was why Grandma Isabel had looked upset when he'd told her about his dreams.

_She didn't look upset,_ he corrected himself.  _I didn't even rate a raised eyebrow with the underage drinking — but the dreams?_  _For a second,_ _she looked seriously freaked. _

Well, if this was the rest of the Marsh family history, he couldn't blame her for not sharing.  She'd been adamant that this kind of thing didn't happen anymore, thoughthe Polarold told a different story.  She probably knew about the shooting party in 1928.  She didn't know about the Polaroid, otherwise she would have removed or destroyed it years ago.  The Polaroid had been his mother's little secret.

_Sleeping pills and Chardonnay,_ he'd told Veronica.  _That's how she'd kill herself._  _She wouldn't want to be found bug-eyed and bloated in some shrimp net_.   But, Lynn Lester Echolls, she of the first-place swimming and diving trophies, hadn't been found at all.

Logan lit another cigarette from the stub of the first one, and smoked that, wishing he had some pot or some booze or some...

_Oh, do you really?_  He was flying straight as he'd been in years, and reality was bending all on its own.  Mind-altering chemicals were just gonna make it worse.  He was way out past the buoys now.  Hell and gone beyond the safe zone where drunk and high equaled numb and fuzzy.  He'd left all that back in Neptune.

_Don't dig.  Leave the devil alone.  Yeah, go on, pussy.  Run back home and be That Guy.   _

_Some people call me Space Cowboy; some people call me the Gangster of Love.  Some people call me The Perpetually-Cuckolded Boyfriend, The Shitty Student, The Son Who Picks Out His Belt of Choice to Get Beaten With, The Drunk Jackhole.  Some people call me Maurice, 'cuz I speak of the Pompitous of Love is a Goddamned Lie._ 

By golly, he wore so many hats, he could be Bartholomew Fucking Cubbins.

"Looooo—gaaan!"

He poked his head through the railing of the widow's walk.  His grandmother stood on the lawn below, shading her eyes from the sun with one hand.  She smiled when she saw him.  So much like his mother.  It surprised him and hurt him every single time.

_I always made him take it out on me, instead of you. I loved you so much. _There would never be enough rage to burn it to ashes; there would never be enough tears to wash it clean, away and gone; forgiven and forgotten, water under the bridge.  _Why wouldn't you stay with me? Why wasn't I enough to make you stay? _

"Dinner's ready," Grandma Isabel called up.

"Okay. Be right down." 

"Wash your hands."

He tipped her a salute.  "Cleanliness is next to godliness."

"That's my boy," his grandmother laughed, and walked back toward to the house, under the angle of the widow's walk and out of his line of sight.

_Except, I'm not your boy.  I'm not anybody's boy.  _

Logan scooped up the photographs, dropped them in the Hello Kitty box and banged the lid shut.

After dinner, he phoned John Ross.

"Hi, Logan! What's up?"

His cousin sounded startled and delighted and nervous, as if Logan had graced him with some divine favor.  Logan _was_ a celebrity, of course, in the reflected light of his father's fame.  But, Logan felt fairly certain John Ross hadn't seen any of his father's movies.  Most of them were R-rated. To John Ross, Aaron Echolls was the guy who'd killed Logan's girl, and that was Aaron's only claim to fame.  Jeanette had put it succinctly last night: for whatever reason, John Ross thought Logan was cool.  Logan now discovered the odd position of being embarrassed by something that typically pissed him off.  He also felt a little bad using this new sparkling sheen of coolness as a wedge — though he wasn't sure how far he could push John Ross.

"If I talk to you about something," Logan said, "can you keep it secret?"

"Yeah, of course!" John Ross replied.  "Those things you told me this afternoon, that's just between the two of us.  Swear to God.  You know that."

"I don't mean those things.  I'm talking about something else.  I need to ask you something."

"Okay." His cousin sounded ready and willing.

Logan was all the way upstairs in his mother's room; his grandparents were both downstairs in the den watching television, and he seriously doubted either one of them would eavesdrop on his conversation.  He hadn't mentioned finding the photographs.  But, he lowered his voice anyway.  "What do you know about Innsmouth?"

"You're talking about that guy at the airport, right?  Well, those people are weird.  They used to have sex with their brothers and sisters a lot.  They probably still do."

"No, I know all about the Innsmouth disorder.  I'm talking about the town."

"Innsmouth is a bad place."

"Is that all?"

"Grandma Frances used to say it was a gateway to Hades.  She's dead now.  Not because of that, I mean.  She was ninety-six.  But, nobody goes there."

"Come on, John Ross. Give.  I'm part of the family.  I ought to know these things."

John Ross was silent for a moment, and Logan wondered if he'd pushed too hard.

"I don't know anything else," John Ross said in a more serious tone.  "Honest.  I don't.  Since Aunt Evelynn, nobody can find out anything about what happened."

"What happened when?" Logan asked, and then he backtracked quickly. "Wait. Hold on.  My mom?  What are you talking about?"

"You don't know?" John Ross exclaimed, then he laughed. "Oh, man!  When she was maybe your age, she stole Grandpa James' keys to the restricted section in the university library.  She got herself locked in all night, on purpose, then she read all the books they won't show to anybody.  Then she and my mom stole a car — at least, that's how the story goes — and they drove up to Innsmouth with a bunch of their friends.  Aunt Lynn's a legend, especially since afterward she went off to Hollywood and became a movie star.  But, now nobody can get away with anything like that."

_That explains the old photos,_ Logan thought.  _But, it doesn't explain why she hid them._

"Why did they go to Innsmouth?"

"I don't know.  My mom won't talk about it, and there was nothing in the papers.  But, Aunt Lynn left here pretty soon after, and she never came back."

"You said earlier something happened in Innsmouth. Are you talking about back in the twenties?  Because I —"

"Logan," John Ross cut him off firmly, "a lot of things go on around here that you wouldn't understand.  I don't really understand them, either.  The grown-ups don't talk about them.  But, people go poking into places they shouldn't, and very bad things happen.  You probably think you've seen everything, but you haven't.  Whatever you're planning to do, you should forget it."

"Who says I'm planning anything?"

John Ross snorted.  "You must be planning _something,_ or you wouldn't have called me."

"Touché," Logan replied wryly.

"I know a couple of Aunt Lynn's friends didn't come back from Innsmouth that night," John Ross added.  "I don't think they ran away. I think they died."

"Leave it alone, okay?" John Ross said.

"I will, if you promise not to tell anyone we had this conversation."

"I promise if you promise," John Ross countered.

"I promise," Logan said.

***


	8. Additional Charge for Roaming

Best begun is half done.  Logan's mother never said anything like that, because most of the time she was half-done with a tumbler of Scotch, but Logan felt certain somebody's mother — Isabel Lester or Celeste Kane, for example — must have said that to one of their kids.  Therefore, at nine the next morning, Logan borrowed the black Mercedes, promised to have it back by dinner, dropped off his grandfather at the university, and went downtown to buy himself a map.

At a little past ten, he was nowhere near half-done.  He was sitting in a Starbucks with a venti iced mocha at his elbow, and a gas station map of the Miskatonic Valley spread out on the table in front of him.  It would take him about two seconds to locate Innsmouth.  That's what he'd figured.  But, he continued his streak of being totally wrong about everything.  Grandma Isabel had mentioned Innsmouth was six miles northeast of Arkham, and both Rowley and Newburyport (eight and twelve miles northward, respectively), were clearly marked.  Innsmouth was not on the map at all.

He propped his chin on his elbow, frowning thoughtfully out the window at the traffic passing on Church Street, thinking about asking one of the locals.  How to phrase the question without coming off any weirder than he absolutely had to?  A moment later, he realized the overhead P.A. was playing Elvis Costello.

_Did the days drag by, did the favors wane?_   
_Did he roam down the town all the time?_   
_Will you wake from your dream, with a wolf at the door,_   
_Reaching out for Veronica?_   


Please. God. No.

Wasn't this against the Geneva Convention?  He should just step outside and have a smoke until Starbucks had the simple human decency to pipe in something merely overplayed and hideous, like Hoobastank.  Of course, that wouldn't stop him from brooding about Veronica, Veronica, Veronica Mars.  So easy to love.  So easy to hate. 

While Logan was scowling out the window at the row of neat Cape Cod storefronts across the street, Jeanette pulled up on a red boy's bike.  She flipped him a wave, hopped off her bike and chained it to a parking meter.  Then she pushed open the glass door.  Today, his cousin wore a pair of cut-off cammo pants, a red tee shirt with a cupcake on the front, and a pair of jellies.  She marched into the Starbucks, her triangular face set grimly, like she was meeting a firing squad. 

"Jeanette? Did we make a play-date I forgot about?"

"Hi, Logan." She walked up to him and gave him a hug — a brief squeeze and she jumped back immediately.  She was practically cringing.

"Don't go all mushy on me; this is embarrassing."

"I have to —" She gestured at the back of the store.

"What is _with_ you?"

"I'll be right back. Excuse me."

She scurried up to the counter.  To order something, he thought initially.  But, she nabbed the restroom key from the barista and darted into the ladies'.  That's when Logan caught up: John Ross had given his word of secrecy about Logan's meltdown yesterday, and about their conversation last night.  Logan believed John Ross had kept his word about yesterday afternoon, though it looked like he'd dropped a few general hints to his sister. _Be nice to Logan.  Logan's had a tough time.  Logan's got some issues.  Logan's several beers short of a six-pack, if you know what I mean, and I think you do.  _But, last night's conversation?  Logan had flat-out lied.  And John Ross was a smart kid.  He'd probably crossed his fingers. 

_Well played, Double-Oh-Seven.  Well played, indeed._

Jeanette emerged a few minutes later, bought something pale pink and slushy, then crossed the coffee shop and slid into the chair opposite Logan.

"Hi, sorry.  I'm not feeling well.  I've got my p —"

Logan held up a hand. "Let's not even go into that. Little piece of advice for you.  You don't have to like me, just because we're related."

"I liked you yesterday."

"So, you and John Ross taking turns babysitting me? Is that it?"

"John Ross has football camp," she replied carefully.  "I thought you and I could..."

"I've got plans."

Logan picked up the map and examined it again. A turn-off for Innsmouth had not magically materialized in the last few minutes.  _A mercy date from a thirteen year-old.  There's an all-time low._

"Why are you being an asshole?" Jeanette asked him angrily.

"I'm going to drive into Newburyport and score some heroin," Logan continued. "Then maybe I'll pick up a hooker or two." 

Logan began to fold up the map along its original creases, when his cell phone buzzed. He pulled it out of his pocket, wondering why the hell he hadn't tossed it in the swimming pool back at The Fortress of Solitude.  Nobody called him that he wanted to talk to.  The glowing screen displayed,

Incoming Call  
D.K.

_Hello, Mr. Almost-Nobody._

He hit Send.  "Hey, Dunk."

"Logan, please don't hang up," Veronica said quickly. "Please, I'm s—"

He snatched the phone away from his ear and stabbed the End button.  "Goddammit!" 

_Fucking bitch.  And fucking goddamned Duncan!  I can't even trust my best friend to not let his cell phone get pinched by Veronica Fucking Mars._

"Telemarketer?" Jeanette asked.

"Know what, Jeanette? I'd love to spend all day shopping for Lip Smackers and dishing about _Half Blood Prince, _but I gotta be going."

He stood up and walked to the door, and Jeanette didn't follow, which surprised him.  And stung. 

_John Ross would've come after me,_ Logan thought, and he was immediately disgusted with himself for thinking that.  _So, you_ want _your cousins to coddle you like a big, fucking baby? Is that what you fucking want? _ 

No, he didn't want that.  He just wanted... he didn't know what he wanted.  Yesterday had been, well... fun.  Mostly.  He actually sort of wanted to spend the day with Jeanette, and do whatever she had in mind, and not think about anything more crucial than what flavor of ice cream to get, but he was too stubborn to turn around and apologize, because Jeanette could not possibly have been more obvious about pitying him.  He walked out of the Starbucks.  His phone rang again, and he chucked it into the garbage can at the curb.

_Fuck you.  Fuck everything._

Logan drove out of Arkham, crossing the Miskatonic River and heading out of town on Highway One.  What the hell, if he couldn't find a turnoff for Innsmouth, maybe he really would drive to Newburyport and score some heroin and hookers. 

Highway One took him past farmhouses progressively more and more ramshackle and weather-worn the farther he traveled beyond Arkham.  The road twisted into wooded country much darker and wilder than it had looked from yesterday's vantage up in the pirate cave.  The hills rose sharply from unploughed meadows strewn with boulders, and on top of several conical peaks, he saw standing stones like the ones on Witch Island.  The hedges and trees bordering the road grew lusher and stranger, until things got downright freaky.  He'd teased Grandma Isabel about her beefsteak tomatoes being radioactive, but this hectic, electric green wilderness full of thorny, fleshy plants he couldn't identify — this really did look like it.  The trees grew together over the road, intertwining limbs forming a shadowy archway. The hedges that skittered branches against the side of the car bore long, wicked briars and berries of a violent red, like no kind of fruit he'd ever seen before. He felt quite confident that if he stopped to sample a handful of this simple country delight, he'd be found stiff and dead by the side of the road in a few hours, with a crust of pinkish foam drying around his mouth.

Logan shook himself sharply_.  _"Jesus Christ! Nice mental image."

Something dark and winged swooped across the road.  He touched the brake, but the thing vanished into the brush before he could slow down.

_Was that a bat? _he wondered.  It was the biggest one he'd ever seen.  He couldn't be certain, but he'd thought it had a long tail.  Either the world's biggest bat, or the world's tiniest dragon.

The Mercedes crossed a covered bridge, tires humming and rumbling and, as the car emerged on the far side, WCTU from Kingsport stuttered and died.  Logan hit the Seek button on the radio.  It cycled through bands and bands of static, picking up nothing at all.  Not one signal.  He clicked off the radio, replacing the empty hiss with the wild piping of birds and the wind rustling through the foliage.  The fine hairs on his back and arms stood at attention and his skin was tight with goose-pimples, despite the heat of the day.  In his entire history of doing dumb things, today's road trip just might take the cake as the dumbest thing ever. 

_Find a place to turn around and go back to Arkham.  Nobody knows where you've gone.  Nobody's gonna know you chickened out, except for you._

Except, it didn't feel like chickening out.  If Duncan were here, Duncan would tell him to turn around.  Shit, _Dick Casablancas_ would tell him to turn around.  Actually, no.  Duncan would have talked Logan out of going in the first place.  They'd be sitting in an air-conditioned bar down by the M.U. campus, drinking cold lagers, and eating steaks and curly fries.

Logan drove a few miles farther down Highway One without seeing a single place in the road wide enough turn the Mercedes around.  He felt like a cow being led down a chute into the slaughterhouse.  What had Grandma Isabel said?  She'd taught High School in Newburyport for twenty-three years?  This was her commute to work?  And here he was all this time complaining about how daily driving was _sooo _hellish in California.  Well, he'd happily sit in traffic jams —

He almost missed it: a dirt road cut off the highway to the right.  He swung the wheel hard, pulling a gravel-spewing turn onto the side road.  That was stupid, he realized a second later.  He could have just driven in Reverse all the way back to Chapman Road. He hadn't seen another car all morning.  He might have panicked a just a tiny bit, there.  Maybe.  Okay, yes.  Maybe a lot. 

No problem.  Everything was copacetic now.  Logan shifted the car into Reverse and started to pull out onto Highway One.  Then he stopped.  He'd been headed north.  This new road ran eastward, to the sea.

_No way, _Logan told himself._  Don't even_.  _Get your ass back to Arkham right now._

_But, my mother.  My mom..._

_She's dead.  She's been dead for months. _

Of course, there was that other possibility.  The one so insane he was almost afraid to think it.  She wasn't dead. She'd jumped off the Coronado Bridge, flipped her tail and blithely swum away.  That was a hell of a straw to grasp at.  He _knew _she was dead.  The current had carried her body to the ocean and that was a perfectly reasonable explanation for why his mother had never been found.  Aaron Echolls the outsider had given her up, and placed a blown-glass bong full of sea water on the mantelpiece and closed the book.  The End.

And yet... and yet...

Dead or fled, fish food or fish girl.  He had to know. 

_Even if she's not dead — either way —  your grandmother's right, you know.  She left you.  Accept the explanation, accept the blame, move on._

"Fuck that."

Logan put the Mercedes in Drive. The car bumped and jolted down the road.  Low, fieldstone walls flanked the car and in numerous places, warty-looking trees had shoved themselves through the barriers of crumbled, slimy stone.  The road was deeply rutted, grass and wildflowers springing up tall and lush in the center, like nobody drove down this way, ever.

He hadn't gone half a mile before the sedan slammed into a pothole, pitched forward, and whipped Logan at the windshield.  The airbag fired; he got nothing worse than a whack to the nose and a fierce seatbelt hickey along the left side of his neck.  The engine rattled and quit.

Logan popped his seatbelt and jumped out of the car.  His nose hurt like hell, making his eyes sting and water.  But, the Mercedes was tilted at a conveniently steep angle so he could see under it.  He'd bent the front axel and something dripped out of a crack in the engine and into the pit in the road that was less "pothole" and more "crevasse." It had completely eaten the right front tire.

He put his hands on his hips, exasperated.  "Well, shit.  Good thing I didn't drive off without my cell phone, because that would be stupid."

Nothing to be done for it now.  He ducked back in the car, retrieved his map and his bottle of water from the passenger side seat-well.  Something pattered on the tobacco-brown leather upholstery; he glanced down.  Blood.  He lifted one hand to his nose and dabbed at it.  Bleeding. 

_Great. Crap. Fucking-fuckity-fuck. _

If he didn't get himself totally fucking killed first.




Logan slid out of the Mercedes and unfolded the map on the hood, trying figure out where he was.  Highway One traveled straight from Arkham to Newburyport with nary a turn-off.  It was a good five miles back to the outskirts Arkham, plus another two to his grandparents' house on Saltonstall Street.  This road might be a driveway to a farmhouse, though he'd seen no mailbox and no sign indicating the road was private property.  Maybe there would be a farmhouse closer down the road, where he could use the phone. He'd walk a down the road a piece, and if he didn't find anything, he'd turn back.

_Oh, _now _you're using your common sense? Better late than never, I guess._

_Shut up, brain._

He set off down the road. In the horror movie, now was when the audience shook their heads and gave up the camp counselor in the tight tee shirt for dead.  Couldn't she _hear_ the sinister theme music?  Didn't she _know_ Jason Voorhees lurked in the bushes, breathing heavily, machete oiled and ready? The audience would be asking themselves: why do these counselors keep coming to Camp Crystal Lake if they know everybody gets turned into devilled ham?  Logan had asked himself these questions many times.

_Does this qualify as irony? Or is it just super-duper annoying?_

Logan walked for a while, the sun standing overhead and then sinking into afternoon, burning the back of his neck.  He kept to the center hump where the grass grew highest and the dirt was the least land-mined by holes.  The terrain changed gradually from rock-strewn meadow to sandy turf, dotted with sprays of tough-looking, spindly grasses.  No farmhouse appeared.  No sign of anything farther up the road at all.  But, now he smelled the sea. 

This smell wasn't clean ocean air.  This smell was dank and briny — stagnant water, with a generous helping of rotting fish.  He'd been walking up a slight rise in the road and, as he topped the hill, a sudden vista spread out below him. A town.  Here was help.  Here was a phone... 

Here was a cluster of dark, dilapidated buildings, most of them decayed and falling to ruin.Houses narrow and shuttered, built close to one another, steeply-slanted roofs huddled together, empty dark windows like staring eyes.Past the town spread the slate gray sea, rumpled by a line of white foam several miles out, where the waves broke on something black, half-submerged in the water. A reef.

Logan had found Innsmouth.

***


	9. Still Life, With Mermaid

Wrong came off Innsmouth in waves.  Like standing too close to speakers at a club, feeling the bass beat thump him rhythmically in the chest.  Logan could feel that right now, except he knew it was his heartbeat, quick and heavy; it felt like his heart was in his throat and his stomach and his ears all at the same time.  Something dark fluttered in the corner of his vision.  He turned fast, but of course he saw nothing behind him.  His second shadow had whisked out of sight again.  He got a nasty shock when he noticed how far the sun had sunk in the western sky.  It was late afternoon.  He glanced at his watch.  Five thirty.  Shit, it was almost _evening_.

His grandmother wouldn't worry about him for at least another couple hours.  Nobody knew where he'd gone.  Jeanette and John Ross probably had some idea — or they would, when they figured out he was missing.  But again, that would be hours from now.

Logan still felt profoundly stupid, of course, but now he also felt very young.  He wanted somebody there with him, somebody to lie and say he'd be home before he knew it, don't worry; it's going to be fine.  He wanted somebody to hold his hand.  He wanted his mother.  Sure, he felt like a fucking pussy, but he acknowledged his pussitude as completely reasonable under the circumstances.  He was up Shit Creek _sans _paddle, no mistake about that.

_Advance or retreat?_

Logan looked back up the road.  He couldn't see the Mercedes.  It was hidden around a bend, screened by the trees and high grass.  Night would fall long before he made it to Arkham.  Ordinarily, he wasn't averse to an evening stroll, but anything could be out there in the dark with him.  He wasn't thinking about mountain lions or bears or hockey-masked killers, or even girlfriend-killers.  Meeting something like that would be almost a relief.  He was thinking about monsters.  At least one species lurked in the area. The photographs tucked in the back pocket of his jeans were proof of that.

He'd been all het up to find Innsmouth and answers, come Hell or high water.  Likely, he'd find both, but what the fuck, anyway.  Here he was. The ultimate fuck-you.




By the time Logan reached a crossroad, the sun slanted low in the west, gilding everything with golden-orange light.  The dirt track he'd been following turned into an actual road, although the going didn't look much smoother.  Instead of asphalt, the street was paved with bricks, laid in a pattern of interlocked chevrons.  Holes gaped in the brickwork, stray bricks poked up here and there.  The pavement looked wet, though Logan knew from Jeanette's complaint last night about the heat that there hadn't been any rain lately.

An almost-unreadably dingy sign swung from one screw, identifying one of the roads as Garrison Street.  The other sign lay in the scraggly brush by the base of the sign pole.  Logan picked it up, brushing off the sandy grit.  Federal Street.  He tossed it back on the ground.  Truly impressive civic pride here in Innsmouth.

Federal-or-Garrison Street cut claustrophobically through tin and tarpaper hovels, skeletal, burned-out wrecks, and then the shantytown turned to tall, Victorian houses crammed closely together, with overhanging gables and balconies that almost touched over the middle of the street, blocking out what little sunlight remained.  Windows were either boarded up or they gaped black and empty, with dusty fragments of broken glass clinging to the frames.  Doors sagged open, lawns had gone to weed, then withered and died.  No cars in the driveways, no bikes dumped at the curb, no sign of people at all. 

As he walked deeper into Innsmouth, he glimpsed a light or two peeking from behind shuttered windows.  After a little while longer, Federal-or-Garrison Street opened into a town square.  No historical preservation contracts around here, obviously.  Half the buildings looked one strong gust from toppling down.  In the center of the square was a bronze statue of a man on horseback. A war hero, maybe.  His head lay at the base of the statue's cement plinth, buried in weeds.  Kitty-corner from the headless horseman stood the Devil Reef Diner.  Blurry shapes swam behind the plate glass window like fish in a dirty aquarium.  But, the place was lit and open.

Logan hurried across the square, aware he was probably heading into even worse trouble.  As he'd expected, the moment the bell over the door dinged, everybody turned to look at him —"everybody" being a waitress in a yellow polyester uniform, and two townies sitting at the counter, hunched over cups of coffee.  The overhead fluorescents were autopsy-theater bright, and the jukebox in the corner wasn't playing Hoobastank, but a faint and warbly Fifties crooner. _Each night I ask the stars up above: why must I be-ee a teenager in love?_ Yes. Even here, the Universe mocked him.

Nobody in the diner looked even slightly fishy.  They all looked perfectly human, as well as cringing and hangdog.  Logan didn’t see a payphone, so he sat down one of the counter stools, feeling really, incredibly conspicuous.

The waitress came over immediately.  With her pale, pinched face and her huge blue eyes framed by sandy lashes, she might have been fifteen or forty.  Her nametag identified her as "Annabelle."  She poured Logan a glass of ice water that looked faintly cloudy and green.  "Get turned around on the highway?" she asked the countertop.

"Depends," Logan answered.  "Is this Innsmouth?"

Annabelle looked up, obviously startled by his lack of Yankee accent.  "It is."

"Not turned around, then."

Her mouth thinned even more. "What can I get you?"

"A phone."

"No phone here.  You might try the Gilman Hotel."  She tilted her head to indicate he should cross the town square, then added in a lower voice,  "Don't know what you come here for.  Not my place to ask.  But we don't have much truck with outsiders.  Wisest keep your head down, and be quick about your business."

"That's the plan. Thanks."

One of the townies slumped at the counter lifted his head.  He was a powerfully-built man in wrinkled overalls and a faded plaid shirt, with bristling gray hair and a full beard, his face tanned and his eyes glittering in deep creases.  He stared sullenly at Logan and then growled,  "Get on home, boy.  Your momma's waiting for you."

Logan put a five on the counter and stood up. "My mother's dead.  Thanks for the homespun wisdom." 

He walked out of the Devil Reef Diner.  Twilight tinted the sky blue-violet, and the air had grown surprisingly chilly during his brief stay in the diner.  Fog creeping in from the ocean side of Innsmouth wreathed the tottery houses, turning them even more seedy and secretive, adding that extra Gothic touch of, "Man, I really, really wish I'd stayed home."  Logan shivered in his tee shirt, wrapped his arms across his chest, and headed across the deserted square, passing through the shadow of the headless war hero.  The potted plants had fleshy, grayish leaves, and looked as though they'd try to bite him or shoot him full of stickers if he accidentally brushed against them.




To his left, stairs covered in the same mothwing carpet curved up into the shadows of the second floor.  On the wall behind the staircase hung a large oil painting of a mermaid, her pale skin glowing in the gloom.  She sat on a rock with the surf crashing around her, combing her long, dark hair and looking at Logan the way his grandmother had briefly looked that morning.  The witchy, fey look.  It was creeping him right the fuck out. 

Logan turned his back on the painting and went over to the concierge desk, a long slab of gray marble with darker veins that glimmered faintly in the light from the overhead fixtures.  A small brass sign read "Concierge" in ornate script, but the desk doubled as a bar.  No stools, but shelves behind the counter held ranks of dusty bottles.  Logan, despite his extensive scholarship of All Things Booze, could not identify a single one of the bottles by shape or color.  Above the desk was a huge mirror, the silver as darkened and dingy as the oil painting, flecked and dusty.  His reflection wavered far down in the depths of the dark mirror-lobby: the small white oval of his face, the ember of his orange tee shirt flickering beneath. 

He binged the bell. The sudden, bright noise was startling.  The shadows roused themselves like ruffled, dusty pigeons and then settled once more over everything. 

Nobody answered the bell.  Logan looked around the lobby at the uncomfortable tapestry chairs and the various framed items on the walls.  Rubbings of old gravestones or bas-reliefs, depicting mostly creatures that were half-fish and half-frog, and entirely familiar.  Pulling the rubber-banded stack of photos from the back pocket of his jeans, he went over to study them more closely.  He flipped through the photos until he found the one of the sea-creature wearing the dress, then he held up the photo and compared the two side by side.  Identical.

The sculptor of the bas-relief hadn't taken much artistic license, though the fish-frogs were intertwined with elaborately twisted motifs of winding seaweed. Another stone-rubbing depicted a Dr. Moreau mash-up of octopus and a bat, crouching among ruins: a gigantic, rubbery-looking thing that Logan very much hoped was imaginary.

"Help yah?"

Logan jumped and turned quickly. "Hey, uh..."

They recognized each other at the same time.

"Gareth?"

"Logan, inn'it?"

Gareth still looked big and dumb, but he also looked like this was his home turf.  He didn't look at all like the frightened people in the Devil Reef Diner.  Logan wasn't exactly happy or relieved to see Gareth, but at least Gareth was familiar.  "What're you doing here?" he asked. 

"Live here," Gareth replied. "Manage the hotel for my Uncle Archibald.  Good to be home, and that's a fact.  But I didn't 'spect to be seeing you around these parts quite so soon."

"I... beg your pardon?"

Gareth smiled.  "I said you had the Marsh family look."

Logan hadn't remembered Gareth saying anything of the sort, until right now.  His stomach gave an unpleasant lurch.  _You're not just up Shit Creek anymore.  Right now, you're headed across the Shitlantic Ocean, full steam ahead.  _

"Yeah, go figure," he replied. 

"Been called, have yeh? Come looking for answers?"

"I'm looking for a phone."

"No phones working 'round these parts.  Big storm knocked down the wires couple a' weeks ago, and the service men ain't all that fond of our little town."

"Can't imagine why; it's so quaint and picturesque."

"You all come looking," Gareth added.  "Sooner or later.  I figured you for a later."

"I'm not really big on waiting around."

Gareth laughed, then gestured to the photos in Logan's hand.  "What you got there?"

"Questions," Logan replied, and held up the stack of pictures.  "Care to explain?"

Gareth's eyes glinted. Logan couldn't quite identify the emotion that fleeted over his ugly face.  Gleeful malice, maybe.  "Impatient fellow, aintcha?"

"Like I said," Logan answered curtly.  "Why don't we skip to the part where you tell me what I want to know, and then we can fast forward to you dumping my body in a shallow grave."

"Now, Logan... what makes you think I'm fixing to murder you?"

"Cut the shit, Gareth."

But Gareth shook his head.  "Ain't up to me.  It's up to you.  In a manner of speaking."

"What do you mean?"

The stairs creaked, and a dark figure shuffled into the murky lobby.  He was older than Gareth and Logan, stooped and squat, with thin, grayish hair combed across the top of his narrow head, his skin wattled and scaly, his dark eyes couched in wrinkled bags of flesh.

"What have we here?" he inquired, sounding like he had a mouth full of marbles.

"I'm betting you're Uncle Archibald," Logan said.

The man nodded.  "Archibald Gilman.  And you are?"

"Logan Echolls."

Not a shadow of surprise or recognition crossed Uncle Archibald's face.  He'd probably never seen an Aaron Echolls movie or picked up a copy of _Entertainment Weekly_. 

_Even Innsmouth has its fine points_, Logan thought.  _Nice town to settle down in, and sink into obscurity, if you don't count the slight drawback of how I'm about to die violently._

"I'm a friend of your nephew," Logan continued.  "We met on the flight into Arkham."

"He's come here all the way from California," Gareth added.

"That a fact, now," Uncle Archibald said with no interest whatsoever.

"It is." Logan crossed the lobby and hiked himself up on the marble concierge desk. "Nice place.  Great surfing.  Hey. Gareth, how's your mother?"

"My momma?" Gareth looked startled at the non sequitor.  "She's fine."

"Glad to hear it. Mine's dead.  She killed herself a few months ago.  How about your dad?  Nice guy? You bond with him over your mutual love of murdering stranded travelers?  He take you on fishing trips every weekend?"

"Sometimes."

"Yeah? Well, my dad beat the shit out of me since I was five — that is, until he got hit by a truck, while he was running away from the cops."

"Boy," hissed Archibald Gilman, "get down from there. I don't need you polluting my air with your language, nor polishing my bar with your ass."

"You're right.  Good golly, what was I thinking?  Wouldn't want to make a clean spot." Logan hopped down behind the desk-slash-bar.  "Let's have a drink.  I've been sober for one whole month, but what the hell do I care if I fall of the wagon?  The only reason I was on it in the first place was those fucking nightmares.  Being drunk's much better."  He grabbed a bottle at random and banged it down on the bar.  "Anyway, where was I?  Oh yeah.  Turns out, my father killed my girlfriend.  That's family togetherness for you.  Oh, and this other girl I was dating after the dead one?  She thought I killed my first girl.  Didn't bother telling me that, though, just turned in enough info to the police to get my ass hauled in.  Cute, huh?  I love the little games girls play.  You got a girlfriend, Gareth?"

"Not presently."

"Well, take it from this sadder but wiser boy, they're nothing but trouble." Logan yanked the cork out of the bottle, and raised it to take a drink, but a pungent, bitter smell hit him.  "Ugh, Christ!" He put the bottle back down.  "Either girlfriends are fucking somebody else behind your back, like, oh... your dad — just as a completely random example —  or, they're getting themselves lit on fire.  We're better off as free men, my friend."  He clapped his hands.  "Right.  I almost forgot. This is the part where I beg for my life?  Oh, _please_ don't kill me.  I'm too young to die.  I've got _so_ much to live for.  Okay.  I'm done begging.  Now, you answer my fucking questions."

"Well, what'cha want to know?" Gareth asked.

Archibald gave his nephew a sharp look, but apparently decided it didn't matter.  He shambled across the lobby toward Logan, and Gareth followed.

"First off." Logan held up the picture again. "What the shit is this?"

"Ah." Gareth took the pictures and flipped through them.  "That's one as didn't take to the water, pour soul.  Some of us share the blood of Father Dagon and Mother Hydra, and we change.  When we're ready, we join the Deep Ones.  See here?"  He held up the photo depicting the white church.  "Esoteric Order of Dagon. Used to stand right across the square, nigh on eighty years ago.  We worshipped the ones under the water, who brought gold to our hands and fish to our nets.  But, the government raided the town in 1928.  Said it was so they could take out a nest of bootleggers running liquor during Prohibition, but that weren't the reason.  Burned down half the warehouses on the waterfront, sent depth charges into the water off Devil Reef, but they didn't kill the Deep Ones. They ain't never gonna do that.  The Deep Ones will rise again with Dagon, and swallow the world, like Noah's flood.  What's immortal can't be wiped out by any means of men."

"Deep Ones?"

"Merfolk.  Some of the sailors used to call 'em that."  Gareth shuffled through more photos in the stack. "These're cool."

"Thanks," Logan said dryly.

Uncle Archibald startled Logan by speaking suddenly. "So, you've been called."

"That's what Gareth said."

"You've had your dreams  Sea folk and cities under the water.  Except they stopped, soon as you got here.  Hmm.  Passing strange, that."

"Enough with the Jedi Master crap," Logan said.  "Weird and mystical.  I get it.  Why did they stop?  Because I was closer to Innsmouth?"

"Exactly. You're called here by the dreams, and then you take to the water.  That's how it works." Archibald came around behind the bar, adding,  "Hsst. Get out with you; y'ain't much of an Innsmouth heir, but you're enough as I can give you the courtesy of a drink."

Logan hiked himself over the bar again, and joined Gareth on the other side.

Uncle Archibald said, "Keep on.  Ask your questions."

"Okay.  I want to know about this Innsmouth Disorder.  Do you all just go nuts and drown yourself, or..."

Archibald Gilman chuckled. "Insanity and death.  That's all our _disorder_ will mean for you, boy."

"We're speaking hypothetically," Logan countered, "since you'll be killing me in a minute or two."

"Fair enough." Archibald raised one hand casually.  "Hypothetically speaking, you won't never take to the sea, 'cept to drown.  Probably not even that.  You splash in the shallows, but you stink like a land-walker.  Your blood's too bound in dirt. If you had the pure blood and you heard the pure call, then I'd welcome you as a brother.  But, you're a throwback.  The dreams don't mean anything 'cept that.  You ain't kin to us, and you're absolutely correct.  You're gonna die tonight."

Logan took a deep breath. "What about my mother?  She's half Marsh."

"You said your momma killed herself," Gareth put in.

Uncle Archibald gave Logan a horrible, knowing grin, a sickle full of small, sharp teeth, and then he turned to Gareth. "He's been yanked about like a fish on a hook 'til he's bloody-gill gasping." He looked at Logan slyly, and Logan felt pure, clear hatred rise inside him like the burn of rubbing alcohol on a cut.  Archibald added, "Damned if you ain't the most pitiful little stray pup I ever did see.  It'd be a mercy to kill you.  You ain't even sure your momma's dead, are you?"

"No," Logan replied.

"Well, I do regret this, as you've come all the way," Archibald said with no hint of actual regret.  "but I can't answer your question.  Not specifically.  If your momma's taken to the water, then she's gone.  Those who join the Deep Ones have no more dealings with land folk.  She's as good as dead to you.  Won't be around to tuck you in, sad to say."  He pulled three smudged glasses out from under the bar, and poured a dollop greenish-black liquor from the bottle into each, then he pushed one of the glasses at Logan.  "Drink your drink, momma's boy."

Logan raised his glass and, looking Archibald in the eye, he said,  "To my mother.  Evelynn Marie Lester."

Archibald Gilman's sneer changed to an expression of amused respect.  He nodded.  "To Evelynn Marie, then."

Gareth followed suit.  "Evelynn Marie."

All three of them drank.  Logan tossed back the shot in one swallow.  It went down with a bitter cold burn, like swallowing brine.  He set the empty glass on the bar.  "I'm ready.  Do it."

But, he wasn't ready for Gareth, who turned and simply picked him up, hurling him across the lobby of the Gilman Hotel like a sack of groceries.  Logan sailed through the air and crashed into the mermaid painting.  Pain exploded from his skull, down his spine.  He slid down the wall and landed in a shocked and helpless heap on the floor.  A swimmy, shadowy Gareth loomed over him.

"You idiot!" Archibald snarled.  "They won't eat him if he's dead!"

_Oh, that's just fucking great, _Logan thought.  And then he blacked out.

***


	10. Stairs and Whispers

Logan came to with his cheek smushed against slimy, splintery boards.  He looked around, afraid to move anything except his eyes, because he was sure his head was about explode like a potato in a microwave.  Fishing gear. Coils of rope.  Two pairs of boots.  The rocking motion he'd thought was just him, wasn't.  A brisk, misty breeze blew over him.  His lips tasted salty-wet.  He added everything together and figured out he was lying in the bottom of a small fishing boat, maybe a twenty-footer.

"He's awake," Gareth announced from somewhere overhead.

"Ng," Logan said. 

Now that he was more alert, he wished he was still unconscious.  His head pounded ferociously.  The odor of rotting fish was overpowering.  A fiery knot of strain pulsed between his shoulder blades where his muscles had cramped up.  And this was because, he noted a moment later, his hands were tied behind his back.

Uncle Archibald poked Logan in the ribs with the toe of his boot.  "Get him on his feet, there, Gareth."

Gareth reached down, took hold of Logan's shoulder with one fleshy paw, and hauled him upright. Logan staggered, glanced down to see what had tripped him. His feet were hobbled, with about a foot of rope between them, to allow him to stand up more or less steadily.  A lead line tied him to a stone weight with a hole bored through the top.  All the better to sink him with.  The stone was carved with weird symbols and drawings of fish.  Drowning folks was evidently something the Gilmans did on a regular basis. 

_Oh, I don't think they mean to drown you.  Uncle Archibald said "they" won't eat you if you're dead._

Logan really wished he hadn't recalled that particular detail.  _Hey, thanks again, brain!_

_After all that bullshit posturing and climbing up on the Coronado Bridge and waah-waah-poor-me-ing — it turns out, I don't actually want to die, and here I am, about to get fed to the fishes.  Or the Deep Ones, or what the fuck ever.  Does _this_ qualify as irony, or is it still only super-duper annoying?_

"You're not s'posed to stand up in boats," Logan mumbled.  He felt distinctly barfy.  He really would rather have stayed horizontal for a while longer.

Archibald grinned.  "Just giving you the courtesy of dying like a man."

"Right neighborly of you."

Behind Gilman and Gareth, the breakers foamed over the jagged black line of Devil Reef, and beyond the reef, looking warm and inviting from far, far away, the lights of Innsmouth twinkled along the shoreline.

"Cheer up," said Archibald.  "Maybe your momma will save you."

"Maybe _your _momma will.  She's sure gonna miss the way I ass-fuck her."

Archibald threw back his head and gave a harsh bark of laughter. "You, boy! You got some brass balls, by God!  I'll give you that."  He picked up a boathook, flipped it around so that the blunt end pointed at Logan. 

"Wait," Gareth said suddenly.  "Ain't you gonna give him any last words?"

"Gareth, I do believe we've heard the final sentiments of Mr. Logan Echolls."

Gareth stared at his uncle accusingly until Gilman uttered an exasperated, "Hmph!"  To Logan, he said, "Guess my nephew has a soft spot for you.  All right then.  You got any last words?"

"Yeah," answered Logan.  "Get on with it."

Gilman grinned, and punched Logan in the chest with the boathook, shoving him over the side of the boat.

This was nothing like his nightmare.  He didn't fall and fall.  He hit the water immediately, and it wasn't hard as concrete.  It received him with a splash, enveloped him, and he sank rapidly, the stone weight pulling him down into darkness, a line of bubbles trailing behind him.  He really was going to drown.  No do-overs.  No waking up in the Starbucks parking lot with a call from the Heartless Bitch buzzing on his cell phone.  _He'd come all this way just to die, and_ he wished he'd spoken to her, if only to say (_I love you.  I'm so sorry._) fuck you, Veronica. 

His lungs started to burn.  Far beneath him, gleaming green, domes and arches and towers.  The undersea city.  He was hallucinating, or dreaming.  He was not seeing the pale, not-human shapes swimming up toward him: fishy, froggy, sharp teeth and claws.  No, he definitely was not.  He couldn't hold his breath any longer; he opened his mouth and inhaled.  Water rushed into his lungs, freezing, spiked agony burst in his chest.  Eclipse. Blackness.  His mermaid mother smiled at him_. __ I'll see you soon, Logan.  Just close your eyes and let yourself fall.___

_Okay.  All right.  I give.  One small step for Logan, one giant step for..._

Something snagged him, stopped his downward plunge.  Weevil.  His fist twisted in the front of Logan's shirt.  _"Uh-uh.  Too slow, cabrón. You and I got some unfinished business." _Logan's head broke the surface of the water and the PCH Bike Club hauled him up onto (the bridge) the slippery rocks of Devil Reef and this was all wrong.  This wasn't the way it happened.  Logan raised his hands to fend off the beat-down he knew was coming.  He coughed up water, started to choke, and (Weevil's crew) his cousins flopped him roughly onto his stomach.  Sharp stones bit his chest and his cheek.  Logan lifted his head and vomited seawater through his mouth and his nose — just about the most disgusting thing he'd ever done in a long career of doing many disgusting things, not to mention truly, astoundingly painful.  No doubt he'd thrown up like that a couple times before, but he'd been too mercifully shitfaced to remember.  He kept throwing up until he was dry-heaving and gagging air.  He tried getting to his knees, enough to lift himself clear of the puddle of watery puke, but his wrists were still tied behind him.  Small hands and shoulders levered him more or less upright. Logan threw up more water, and the waves immediately swept it back to the ocean. 

"Are you okay?"

"Is he all right?"

"I think so.  I don't know.  Logan?"

"Guh," Logan said. His stomach rolled and he vomited again; this time he only managed a teaspoon or two of foamy spit. Somehow, miraculously and impossibly, his cousins had saved him.  Jeanette and John Ross held him up, one on either side "Uhn. F-fuh-fuck..."

"What'd he say?" John Ross asked.

"Fuck," Jeanette reported.

"He sounds all right."

Logan sat back on his butt, clenching his teeth hard to stop them from chattering, and his body started to buck and shudder instead.  He'd never been so profoundly fucking freezing in his entire life.

"He's cold," John Ross said, dripping wet and worried. "It's cold out here."

John Ross wrapped his arms around Logan, and Jeanette shocked the hell out of Logan by likewise embracing him from the other side.  All three of them were wet, so their Logan sandwich wasn't doing much good, or so he thought, but after a little while his shivers stopped, and his breathing came a little more easy.

He started again, "Where's the airlift?"




"What?" said John Ross.

"Is there an escape plan? And how the ever-loving fuck — " Logan broke off as he started coughing again, gagging up even more seawater, oh goody.  "How did you find me?"

"You shouldn't swear so much," John Ross said.

Jeanette pulled away from Logan and rose to a crouch.  "You talk to him," she told John Ross.  "He likes you better.  I'm gonna do a little recon."

She crawled quickly and nimbly away from where he and John Ross sat on the rocks.  Logan tried to see where she was going, but darkness swallowed her almost at once.

"Here," John Ross said.  "Hold out your hands."

Logan did so. John Ross pulled a Swiss Army knife out of his pocket, went around behind Logan and began cutting through the wet ropes that bound Logan's hands together.  He explained in a low voice, "There's supposed to be smugglers' caves along the reef.  But, we gotta make sure those guys in the trawler don't spot us."

"_Supposed_ to be?" Logan repeated.  "I thought you were the authority on bootleggers, pirates and smugglers."

John Ross shrugged, pulled the wet cord away, then moved to work on the knots around Logan's ankles. "There's only so much I can find out.  I'm not Aunt Evelynn, y'know.  She kinda ruined it for the rest of us."

_Yes, she really did,_ Logan thought.

Now, he felt the dull sting where the ropes had chafed his wrists, and the miniature sun burning in the center of his chest where he'd been hit with the boat hook.  He'd definitely have a giant bruise there, but Logan, long experienced with broken bones, knew he didn't have any now.  Also on the plus side, his busted nose hurt a lot less by comparison.

A soft clatter of sliding rock signaled Jeanette's return.

"Come on," she whispered, and slipped an arm around Logan's shoulders, helping John Ross lift him up.

Logan did most of the work.  He was twice as big as either one of them, and by now he'd gotten his muscle coordination back, mostly.  He climbed to his feet and followed his cousins as they edged their way carefully along the slimy rocks of Devil Reef in the wavering beam of Jeanette's flashlight.  Before long, the flashlight beam picked out the dark hole of a cave entrance.  All three of them ducked into it.  It was inky black save for the flashlight, but now that they were out of the wind, _finally —_ it was a little warmer.

Jeanette led them deeper inside. Instead of ending at a blank wall of rock, the cave opened into an arched doorway.  From there, a chiseled spiral staircase descended into the earth.

"This," Logan said slowly, "bodes ill."  The echoes of his voice bounced around and slowly died away.

"Shh!" Jeanette hissed.

"Wait," he whispered back. "Hang on a sec."  He frisked himself, patted the roll of LifeSavers and the mermaid key, his wallet and the car keys, and then he came up with the mini-mag he'd taken from the Mercedes.  He wasn't sure if the mini-mag would work after being submerged in the water, but when he turned the little ring on the end, a strong beam of light emerged.  "Sweet."

"Guess you're not totally useless after all," Jeanette said.

"Start being nice to me, or you're not getting any LifeSavers."

"You have LifeSavers?  Why was this not mentioned before?"

"I was kinda preoccupied by the whole drowning thing.  Here."  He handed over the roll of LifeSavers.

"Hm," she said.  "Soggy pocket candy."

"Sorry about that."

They descended the staircase carefully.  The risers were muddy and wet, cut deep enough that it was fairly non-treacherous to walk down them, but Logan kept one hand on the center pillar of the staircase anyway, even though his fingers trailed in cold ooze.  Better that than taking the header to end all headers.

"The whole Miskatonic Valley has caves everywhere," John Ross explained in a low voice.  "Sometimes, people hollowed out tunnels, but mostly it's natural caves.  There's supposedly stashes of gold and bootleg liquor — all sorts of stuff, and when I get older, I'm going to map out this whole system, write a book, and get rich."

"Then maybe you can take the D.A.R. on weekend tours."

"Oh no." John Ross looked aghast.  "I don't think they'd like that at all."

Logan grinned.

"We are _so_ going to get grounded," Jeanette muttered. "I can't believe I let you talk me into this."

John Ross replied, "But, they would've killed Logan!"

Jeanette swung the flashlight beam around, pointing it at the two of them. "I should have stopped you," she snapped at Logan.  "I never should have let you leave town, even though I was only postponing your unavoidable stupidity."

"You didn't know," Logan replied, baffled by her sudden attack.

Jeanette glared at him.  "Of _course_ I knew.  John Ross _told_ you at the airport.  I'm a touch-no."

"My... boy-cooties told you where I was going?" Logan hazarded.

"God. No." Jeanette sighed.  "How can you be related to me, and still be such a sped?"

John Ross answered her, "Don't be mean.  He doesn't understand.  Just show him."

Jeanette huffed in exasperation, then she closed her eyes.  In a much lower pitch and a gentler tone, she said, "All I want is to hate you, and I can't.  All I want is to kiss you, and I can't.  I love you, Veronica.  Soccer uniform to smashed headlights, it's always been you."

Logan stared at her, utterly dumbstruck.  He became aware that his mouth was flapping open.  He shut it. The penny dropped.  Not a touch-no.  A touch-_know_.  Christ. Jeanette was right: he was a complete sped_.  _That's how she'd figured out he'd brought only one suitcase; she'd picked up an impression.  When she'd hugged him in Starbucks that morning, she'd read him like a bar-code scanner_.  _No wonder she'd run straight to the bathroom.

"I'm sorry, Logan," she said.  "I wouldn't have done that to you.  Not without your permission, except John Ross said you were going to get killed."

"And John Ross would be what, now?"

"Annoying."

"I mean —"

"I know what you mean," she cut him off.

"I don't have to cheat," John Ross said to Logan. "I'm smart."

"Uh-huh." Logan replied quietly. "Well, in case you and Professor Trelawney somehow missed the glaringly obvious, I wasn't too keen on the whole continuing-to-live gig."

"I know," Jeanette said.  "But we like you.  Besides, now... " She looked at him hopefully. "Maybe not so bad?"

"The night's still young."

Jeanette smiled, turned and continued down the stone steps into the darkness.  Logan followed her, and John Ross brought up the rear.  They walked about ten minutes without speaking, Logan trying to let all of it settle into his head, finding it less upsetting and _slightly_ less monstrously embarrassing.  His cousins had known him about a day and a half, and they'd gone for broke to save him.  Sure, maybe they thought they were having themselves a great adventure, just like the Goonies, but that didn't change the fact that they'd both risked their lives.  When you came right down to it, that was pretty fucking awesome.

John Ross said, "Logan?"

"Yeah?"

"Are you mad?"

"No," Logan replied.  "I'm not mad.  Except about missing out on the X-Men powers."

"That all comes through our dad's side," John Ross said. "Besides, I don't have any X-Men powers, either."

"Yeah, but you've got that whole 'smart' thing going on."

"You're smart, Logan."

Jeanette said curtly, "You're not missing out.  A couple of my father's relatives have gone insane and-or killed themselves.  You don't want the X-Men powers, trust me."

Logan opened his mouth to say something.  To apologize, or maybe point out that he wouldn't object to having powers like Wolverine, but John Ross spoke up first.

"Maybe you have something and just don't know it.  Sometimes things are sneaky.  You can think they're something else, and not realize it until you've got a, um..."

"Brain hemorrhage?"

"Amplifier," Jeanette supplied, sounding amused.

"A place like Witch Island can be an amplifier," John Ross explained.  "That place has power, so when you see things, they're usually true things.  Or, a person like Jeanette could boost the signal."

"So, you know what the tower means," Logan said to her. "Don't you?"

"Sort of.  I don't think I'm supposed to tell you."

"Fine," Logan said.  "Be cryptic.  I'm used to being kept in the dark about every goddamn thing in the universe, until it's too late."

"Well, that's lucky," Jeanette said.  "I worried you'd get upset."

Logan made a "ha-hah-so-droll" face at his cousin's back, and then went on, "Okay. Whatever.  Just tell me how you found me.  John Ross knew I was going to do something stupid. That's pretty much a given, anyway.  But, how did you find me at the Starbucks?"

"I came over to the house," Jeanette explained, "but, I missed you. Grandma Isabel said you'd left early and took the car into town.  I followed the car.  I'd been in it the night before, so it was pretty easy to track.  Then once I found the car, I followed your track."

"What's that look like?" Logan asked, fascinated and thinking that Veronica with all her high-tech gizmos, would trade every one of them, plus her left arm, for Jeanette's method of cheating.

Jeanette replied, "It's like a bright orange skid-mark, except only in my head, you know?"

"Ew," he said.

"I meant like a _tire track_," Jeanette retorted, annoyed.  "And shut up, Mr. I-Didn't-Pack-Any-Underwear. God! I should've just stayed home and watched the _Lost_ repeat." 

"She doesn't mean that," John Ross said.

"I gave up shirtless Sawyer for you, jerkwad."

"And I appreciate that," said Logan. "Thanks.  Both of you."

"Well." Jeanette appeared somewhat mollified. "Okay. You're welcome.  So, anyway.  You had to drive down Highway One, and that's about eight miles, but we biked across fields; its only around three and a half miles, so you didn't have that much of a head start. We found Grandpa James' car —" She turned around again to give him a look.  "You're going to get it for that one."

"Yeah, well I've been getting it for years, Jeanette. No big surprise there."

Jeanette looked puzzled, and then her eyes widened.  "Oh, God.  No, I didn't mean... he won't, Logan.  He's not going to do anything like that.  I just meant he was going to ground you, or give you chores.  I promise.  Not everybody's like your father.  Grandpa James would never do that.  He couldn't..."  She bit her lip.

Logan, who knew better, merely looked at her without saying anything. 

His cousin went on, with a only slight quaver in her voice, "We... we picked up your trail from where you'd left the car.  And then once we got to Innsmouth, we hid our bikes and followed you.  We caught up with you right after you went into the Gilman Hotel, but we couldn't just go barging in, firearms blazing, because — well, no firearms.  Bad planning.  I know.  I should've watched more of your dad's shitty movies, no offense."

"No, I'm with you there."

"We went down to the waterfront and found the Gilmans' boat.  That track matched the track on the hotel steps, so we stowed onboard.  The rest you know."

"How did you know where they'd take me?" Logan asked.

"Where _else_ would they take you?"

"Good point."

That was also the point where the spiral staircase ended. 

_***_


	11. Reefer Madness

Following Jeanette, Logan ducked under an archway and emerged into a huge room. Tunnels branched off in different directions, and water dripped steadily with an echoing plock... plock.  They were underneath Devil Reef, and probably all the way under the Innsmouth harbor.  From somewhere deep within the warren of tunnels came the low tolling of a bell, and Logan recognized the sound immediately. 

_They know I'm missing.  _The thought streaked across his brain like a meteorite.

He didn't know how he knew it, he just did.  It didn't matter how.  It also didn't matter _that_ he knew.  He had no idea how to use this knowledge.  It was moot, like so many other thoughts suddenly crowding his head:  _Too late.  Turn back.  Abandon hope all ye who enter.  Here be monsters.   _And fifty years from now, while he was snifting a brandy and penning his memoirs, he would write: _"Somehow... in my deepest heart... I suddenly knew."_ 

Jeanette and John Ross stopped at the foot of the staircase, and both turned to Logan, probably because he was the oldest, and therefore closest to a grown-up.  Jeanette whispered, "What now?"

Logan shrugged. "I don't know."

He and Jeanette panned their flashlights around, picking up glimpses of carvings along the walls and floor: weird hieroglyphs, fish, winged and tentacled creatures, star maps and magical diagrams like the one in the old photograph.  Which was no longer in his back pocket, because he'd left it at the Gilman Hotel.  Not like he'd had much choice. 

Logan said softly, "Ah, crap."

What he would have given for a comforting, familiar _Fuck You! _or a_ Dennis Wuz Here, 1975.  _

John Ross, ever practical, pulled a compass out of his pocket.  "Innsmouth is this way," he announced and set off down one of the tunnels.  Logan and Jeanette followed him. 

After only a minute or two of walking, low voices and the scuffling of feet floated up from the passageway ahead.  It sounded like a large number of people — Logan hoped it was people.  The sounds were disturbingly slithery and floppy, and reminded him of the squishy carpet in the Gilman Hotel.  He and Jeanette switched off their flashlights.  The blackness was absolute.  Maybe because Logan knew he was underground as well as underwater, he felt as if he could reach out and put his hands on the cool, slightly yielding surface of the dark.  John Ross touched his arm, slid his fingers down Logan's sleeve, then took hold of Logan's hand.  Jeanette caught hold of Logan's other hand, the mini-mag clasped between their palms.  The three of them stood with their backs pressed to the stone wall of the tunnel.  Now that he'd stopped moving, Logan became aware again that his clothes were still cold and damp, that his feet hurt, his chest hurt, and the bridge of his nose still smarted.  After a moment, he realized he could see the opposite wall.  Faint golden light flickered up ahead, around a turn in the tunnel.  He picked out the pale smudges of Jeanette and John Ross standing to either side of him.  He let go of his cousins' hands, inclined his head, and the three of them crept a little way down the tunnel, thief-stealthy in their sneakers.

The tunnel ended in an archway like the one at the bottom of the spiral staircase.  Logan peeked around the corner.  If this was the way back to Innsmouth, they were screwed.  They could pick another tunnel and wander around all night, and maybe get hopelessly lost or fall down a chasm, but they weren't going back this way. 

Hanging lanterns lit the big chamber past the arch; flames fluttered with sickly, low yellow light, illuminating about fifty Innsmouth natives.  They all had the fishy look.  Some stood, some squatted, some rocked gently back and forth, some mumbled under their breath.  Logan couldn't pick out anything distinct.  It didn't sound like English.  In the middle of the smoothly-chiseled stone floor, drawn in chalk and blood, was an elaborate circular diagram.  Logan turned his head quickly, feeling the back of his throat clutch.  He didn't need a better look.  Here was the big daddy of the diagram in the old photograph. 

"Shit," he said under his breath. "Shit, shit, shit."

"Logan, what are we going to do?"  Jeanette whispered.

"Stop asking me that!  I don't know!"

"Well, _think _of something!"

Logan glared at her.  "Okay.  How 'bout we roll a couple of eight-sided dice?"

John Ross murmured, "They're gonna try and summon something."

Disbelief and fear mingled uncomfortably in Logan's stomach. "You mean like what? The devil?"

"Something older," John Ross replied.

"Well, well..." drawled a familiar voice behind them. "If it ain't Mr. Logan Echolls, all the way from California."

Logan sighed.  Great.  It wasn't like the three of them could have come up with a brilliant plan, given a few more minutes, but getting caught this fast was just embarrassing. 

Archibald and Gareth Gilman stood behind them, Gareth holding up a hissing kerosene lantern.  The two townies were as dripping wet as Logan and his cousins, but the Gilmans didn't look the slightest bit cold or uncomfortable.  In fact, the Gilmans looked even more froggy-fishy than they had in the lobby of the hotel.  Uncle Archibald's skin had taken on a distinctly green and scaly look.

Logan stepped forward.  Cliché it might be, but if the Gilmans wanted his cousins, the Gilmans would have to go through Logan.  "Let's skip the banter," he said.  "I've come for what's mine."

Uncle Archibald raised his eyebrows.  "And what might that be?  A slow and messy death?"

"You tried that already.  Didn't work on me any better than it did on my mother.  I took to the water.  Now, I'm back.  I want a piece of whatever you're doing in there.  Also, I owe you —" He pointed at Gareth. "— an ass-kicking."

"You're way too scrawny to kick my ass," Gareth scoffed.  "And you didn't survive taking to the water."

"Sure I did."

Gareth slashed his hand scornfully at Jeanette and John Ross.  "They saved you, I bet. Out-of-towners, even."

"So? I don't remember that being one of the rules against joining your swim team."

Archibald Gilman smiled thinly.  "A mere technicality."

"Let me tell you some interesting stories about mere technicalities."

"I do owe you a debt of gratitude, boy.  For this."  

From the pocket of his loose, nubby brown trousers, he pulled the photograph of the magical diagram.  It wasn't close enough for Logan to see it clearly.  Reading the queasy relief on Logan's face, Archibald grinned. 

"You know," Gilman said, "that February night in 1928, the government men burned up The Esoteric Order of Dagon and confiscated all its books, shot all its priests, and we lost ourselves the means to call forth grandfather Yog-Sothoth."

"Iä, praise be," Gareth mumbled.  He was answered by a murmur from the people gathered in the room beyond, though they couldn't possibly have heard that. 

Logan didn't dare turn and glance at the chamber behind him.  Jeanette and John Ross clung to him with panicky tightness.  He was scared now, too.  It was one thing to go it alone, face down somebody intent on turning you into a sticky red smear on the floor.  You had nobody else to worry about.

"We thought the sign was lost forever," Archibald added. "Until you brought it back to us."

"I'm considerate like that," Logan said.  "Ask anybody.  All right, so you summon up old Soggy-Thoth —"

"_Yog-_Sothoth," Gilman corrected him.

"Iä, praise be," Gareth repeated.

"Dude, shut up."

"Don't you talk to me that way!"

"Gareth, shut your mouth," Gilman snapped.

_Ha! Burn! _Logan thought.  He made a kissy-face at Gareth, whose answering glower steamed with skin-peeling evil.

Archibald continued, "They tried to summon the lurker at the threshold back in 1928.  They were fools.  They waited too long.  The government men killed them.  But, we shall call Yog-Sothoth now.  It is the master of time and space, the key to the gate; Yog-Sothoth exists everywhere and nowhere. We will send it back, and send ourselves back.  Kill the government men.  Kill them all, and then we rise.  What do you think of that, boy?"

Logan opened his mouth, but it was John Ross who answered Gilman.

"I think it won't work," the nine year-old said in a tone of grave concern, as if this upset him tremendously, and since it was John Ross, it probably did. 

"Well, now," Archibald said, "The sprat has a tongue in his head."

Logan had been wondering how Gilman would refer to John Ross, since the appellation of "boy" was already taken.

"It can't work, since it _didn't _work," John Ross added.  "It's already not worked."

Gilman leaned down and smiled at John Ross with oozy-sweet indulgence.  "A child cannot comprehend how the veils shift between the present and the past — and what a true wizard may accomplish."

"It won't work," John Ross repeated.  "This isn't _Star Trek_."

Logan snorted.

Gilman said with menacing softness, "We're wasting our valuable time gum flapping.  Get on now."

He gestured toward the chamber behind them, and Gareth flexed his free hand in a meaningful way.  Followed by his cousins, Logan turned and walked into the chamber, trying unsuccessfully to keep his eyes from the design on the floor.  That meant looking at something else, like the Innsmouthers gathered in the chamber, hideous and inbred and menacing in the lantern light.  All of them murmured a chant under their breath. It wasn't "Iä, praise be," anymore. It was something snarly and glottal, and the air in the chamber shimmered like the highway in a heat haze, though it was as cold and damp as the rest of the tunnels.  Logan suddenly pictured himself writing this as an essay for English:  _How I Spent My Summer Vacation._ _"...and then we were sacrificed to their hideous alien god.  The End."_

_Do something,_ he told himself.  He couldn't think of a thing.

A black shape formed in the center of the circle, an elastic, pulsing darkness.  Logan recalled his earlier thought about reaching out to touch the dark in the tunnel, and he swallowed hard.  Jeanette clutched his arm painfully tight.  Flashes of the thing surfaced and vanished again in the seething blackness, shiny and slug-like, with antennae and writhing feelers and snapping crustacean claws, shoving free of the expanding rip in the center of the room.

"Hail!" Archibald Gilman cried out from behind him.  Logan jumped.  "Hail, Yog-Sothoth!  Master of the dark beyond! Iä, praise be!"

"Iä, praise be," the other townspeople hissed and burbled.

Archibald turned to Logan.  "Mr. Logan Echolls, you've done me a favor, so I'll return it.  You'll meet our fine master Yog-Sothoth first, so you don't have to watch your friends die."

"Thanks," Logan replied, "but I'm allergic to shellfish."

Uncle Archibald cackled. Gareth didn't look amused at all. 

"Go," Logan told Jeanette.  "Get away from me."

"Logan —"

"Go! Both of you!"

Gareth advanced on Logan, raising his meaty paws.  Logan smiled. 

"What you smirking for, asshole?" Gareth snarled.  Whatever friendly feeling the younger Gilman might have had for Logan earlier, it was obviously gone now.

"I know something you don't know," Logan replied.

"And what might that be?"

Logan moved fast, whipped back and belted Gareth across the jaw with a right cross.  Gareth staggered.  He didn't go down.  Logan hadn't expected him to.  He was too big.  Big, but slow.  Hopefully.  Gareth stumbled toward the chalk circle on the floor.

"Everything past a third-grade education," Logan answered.  He darted forward and punched Gareth in the face again, then in the stomach.  Gareth bent double with a startled "whoof!"

"Told you I owed you an ass-kicking," Logan added.

"Gareth!" Archibald hollered.

Behind Gareth, Yog-Sothoth birthed itself, ripping into the chamber, massive, barnacled greenish-black lobster claws dripping with water and seaweed.  That was bad.  Worse, in the darkness beyond the thing, Logan glimpsed the main square of Innsmouth.  The war hero statue had its head.  Cars parked on the street had running boards and spoked wheels.  A current of freezing wind poured from the hole, swirling snowflakes into the room.  He was looking into a winter night from 1928.  The night of the raid, probably.  Logan focused his attention grimly on Gareth alone.  He'd freak out later.  If there was a later.

"Gareth!" his uncle yelled again. "Quit foolin' around, you useless load of crap!"

Logan felt a brief (very brief) twinge of sympathy for Gareth, just before Gareth reared up and took a swing at him.  Logan ducked.  If Gareth landed a single punch, it would be all over. Big, bold new frontiers of pain.  Logan sprang up, swinging his full weight into an uppercut that smashed Gareth's chin.  Gareth's head rocked back, his hands flew out like he was going to hug Logan.  He toppled, crashed to the stone floor and slid through the circle, printing a long, wet smear in the blood and chalk.

_"GARETH!"_ Archibald yelled, panic spiking his voice.

Logan had only knocked Gareth over. Nothing serious, sadly, but Lobster-Thoth lunged for Gareth with its huge claws, blubbering and clacking and quivering into the room.  The worshippers broke for the exit, shrieking in high, whistling voices as the monstrous black mountain of lung-oyster seized a screaming Gareth in its claws.

"Time to go!" Logan yelled to his cousins.

Uncle Archibald darted past Logan, toward Gareth, against the torrent of townies bottlenecking in the tunnel mouth as they frantically tried to shove past each other. 

There weren't many golden moments in the life of Logan Echolls.  Moments when time slowed down and every detail imprinted itself with perfect, crystalline clarity on his mind, filling him with a feeling like he could do no wrong, like he was immortal.  One of them happened right then.  As Archibald Gilman ran past him, Logan plucked the photograph of the magical diagram right out of Gilman's hand.

Then everything speeded up again. Logan sprinted for the black rip in the center of the room.  Following his cousins, he dove through it into the snowy night.

***


	12. Me and My Shadow

He landed in the middle of the street, road-rashing both his palms on the brick.  Add that to the growing list of bumps and scrapes he'd sustained this evening.  But, he was still breathing, and so were his cousins, despite repeated attempts to stomp them like cockroaches.  Of course, they'd freeze to death now.  All three of them were wet, and Jeanette was in shorts.  Logan hugged his arms tightly around his middle and immediately began to shiver.  They had to get somewhere warm, and fast.  He shot a quick glance around the town square. Innsmouth was no more inviting in 1928 than it had been in 2005.  All the buildings were shuttered and dark.  Sullen orange glowed on the horizon, in the direction of the waterfront.  A sudden, low WHUMP! shook the pavement. Four-point-five, maybe.  Logan realized a moment later that the earth tremor was actually a depth charge detonating off Devil Reef. 

"Logan?" John Ross said. "Where are we?"

Jeanette burst into tears.

"Come on."




He headed that way at a fast clip.  Okay.  Regroup and rethink.  Crack a bunch of books, learn quantum physics, whip up a brilliant scheme to prevent his mother from marrying his father. Sure, John Ross had pointed out plans like that never worked because they _hadn't_ worked, and Logan suspected Archibald Gilman's brilliant scheme hadn't worked out too well, either.  Not to mention, Logan was a far cry from brilliant, but maybe... but... all right, no.  Plan Two. Open a speak-easy.  Invent everything.  Get stinking rich.  Wait eighty years to see Veronica again.  Be the skeevy old guy on the park bench.  God, that was fucking depressing.

The air was warm.




"Holy shit," he said.  "Holy shit." 

He scrambled up and spun around, staggering.  His ears were ringing and his balance had gone all funky, but staying upright while drunk was a skill he hadn't lost through lack of practice, and he didn't fall over.  Innsmouth looked the same, minus the snow.  The Revolutionary War statue had no head, and the two cars parked far down the street were a Toyota Camry and a rusted-out Ford pickup.  Overhead, an airplane descended toward Arkham International, flashing red and white lights.  The sight charged Logan full of pure, incandescent glee.  Space and time had popped back into shape.

"Yes!" He shot both fists into the air. "Fucking-A!"

Jeanette and John Ross climbed to their feet slowly, Jeanette looking around in dizzy, dazed wonder, John Ross much more calmly.

"I knew you had a plan, " John Ross said to Logan.

"Ha!" Logan stabbed a finger at Jeanette.

"You had squat!" she yelled back at him.

"Who's the man?" Logan whooped. "Who is it? It's me! I'm the man!" 

He broke an end-zone victory dance in the middle of the street.  Jeanette started giggling. 

The front door of the Gilman Hotel opened, spilling light into the street and silhouetted in it was the unmistakable slumped and lumpy shape of Archibald Gilman.  He stepped into the street, and things poured after him, flopping and slithering, put together wrong for humans, too fishy-looking even for townies. 

"Whoops," Logan said.

The three of them took off like Neptune High running a track meet against Pan.  Out of the blocks and down the unfortunately named Fish Street, toward the Innsmouth waterfront.  Logan held no illusions about outrunning the things. He and his cousins were already tired and, sturdy as John Ross was, he was small.  He was already starting to puff and struggle. Where the hell could they possibly go, even if they could get away?  They were headed toward the ocean. They'd have to hide.

Logan tagged Jeanette on the arm, pointed, and the two of them turned down a side street between rows of buildings, crowded like crooked teeth. Logan was practically dragging John Ross by the hand now.  A labyrinth of narrow alleys twisted between warehouses and tenements, nearly as dark as the tunnels under Devil Reef.  No street lights.  No warmly glowing windows. 

Logan sprinted to an intersection of dark passageways shooting off at random directions.  He skidded to a stop, poised between Jeanette and John Ross, still holding John Ross's hand, panting hard, stealing a precious second to catch his breath.  The briny-fish tang of the ocean was very strong.  The slapping and pattering of many feet rose from behind; the things called to one other in a whistling, barking language that sent a chill skittering up Logan's back like an icy spider. 

A shadow flashed in the corner of his vision.  Thinking it was one of the fish-creatures, he turned quickly.  It wasn't.  Just that damn darkness he'd been seeing all summer.  Except, this time it didn't vanish.  Like a twisting pillar of smoke, the shadow hovered in the middle of the street less than two feet from him.  Logan stared at it, poised on the balls of his feet.  Run? Fight? Scream like a maniac?

Jeanette took hold of his hand, and the shadow revealed itself at last.

"Mom," Logan whispered.

His mother smiled, raised her fingers to her lips and then extended her hand to place the kiss on Logan's cheek.  He didn't feel her touch; instead a breath of cool air swept his entire body, raising the hair on his arms.  His eyes filled with tears. 

His mother glided away from him, turned and pointed down an alleyway.

_"Your mother has an excellent point."_

"Let's go," Logan said.

They ran to the mouth of the alley.  Logan looked back over his shoulder once. His mother was gone.  He'd come for an answer and he'd found it. 

Dodging trash cans and splattering through heaps of stinking garbage, Logan and his cousins hurried down the alley.  It dead-ended at a metal door with a heavy, rusting chain across it, pulled through fat ring bolts and secured by a padlock the size of Logan's two fists together.  The barking and slobbering and slithering came closer, followed by an incredibly skin-crawly snuffling noise, as if the things were trying to sniff them out.

"Fuck!" Logan hissed. "Fuck! Fuck!"

John Ross grabbed him by the sleeve. "Logan, look!"

Logan followed where John Ross was pointing: the smoke-blackened bricks above the metal door.  Jeanette aimed her flashlight beam up there and Logan saw a faint, almost rubbed-away painting of a smiling mermaid with long, marcelled hair and a starfish necklace.  The mermaid key.

_Mom, I love you! _he thought. _Thank you, thank you, thank you!_

Logan dug in the back pocket of his jeans, hoping to God the key was still there. It was.  He pulled it out, stuck it in the padlock and turned it.  Nothing happened. 

The lock was rusty.  It looked like it hadn't been opened since the raid in 1928.  He jiggled the key around.  "Please, please, please..."




Uncle Archibald and his pack of horrors had definitely heard that.

Logan shoved John Ross into the dark warehouse.  Jeanette ducked in after him, and then Logan himself; the two of them pulled the door shut again.  Logan grabbed the chain from Jeanette, looped it through the door handle and the hasp on the wall, then padlocked the door.  Something heavy slammed the other side.  Jeanette shrieked and jumped back, knocked over something with a clatter, and shrieked again, then clapped both hands over her mouth, looking both terrified and embarrassed. 

More noises — whispery, like fabric or flippers sliding over the door. Logan heard faint, watery snarls and barks.  They couldn't get in.  Logan didn't know if he and his cousins could get _out_, either, but that was beside the point.  He'd happily starve to death, just to spite Archibald Gilman.

John Ross took a few tentative steps into the dark interior, and moved the flashlight slowly around.  The beam caught the flare of a mirror, glimpses of small round tables, chairs, a barstool (the object Jeanette had knocked over).  A long bar with a brass rail.  A small, empty bandstand in one corner.  A wooden ship's figurehead of a seductively  smiling mermaid, her fingers twined through her necklace. Three starfishes.  Logan grinned.

"I hate to ask this..." Jeanette began.

Logan said, "Wait. Let me guess.  'What now, Logan?'"

"Pretty much."

"It's a speak-easy.  There's gotta be another exit."

"Fan out and search?" John Ross asked.

"You got it, my man."

Jeanette found the back door, as Logan half-expected she would.  He and John Ross had to hunt with their eyes, but she could use her hands and she covered ground a lot faster.  The exit was behind the bar: a mirrored door.

"You open it," she told Logan. "You're the scariest."

"Oh, thanks a lot."

"I meant that as a compliment."

Logan grabbed a dusty bottle from behind the bar.  "Manly," he said.  "That's a compliment. Strong. Brave. How 'bout one of those?"

"Come on," Jeanette answered.  "I've been in your head.  Being able to scare something scary? _There's_ a talent!"

"Fine," Logan sighed.  "Whatever."  But, he was pleased anyhow.  He'd never really thought about it like that.

He felt along the top of the hidden door until he found the pressure latch.  As the door swung open, he raised the bottle.  Nothing leapt out to grab them.  John Ross pointed the flashlight inside, illuminating a flight of wooden stairs descending into darkness. 

From behind Logan, Jeanette intoned a sepulchral voice, "I am your Angel of Music..." and then she peered around him into the passageway beyond. "Oh, great.  Another tunnel."

The short staircase ended at a small wooden dock with an inclined ramp to the water.  The wooden pilings under the warehouse gleamed with dim green radiance, and beyond the pilings, Logan caught a glimpse of the moon riding low in the sky above the open sea.  A large shape shrouded in cobwebby canvas was tied up at the head of the ramp.  Holding a hand over his mouth and nose, Logan tossed the canvas back, raising a plume of dust and revealing a boat about ten feet long, its wooden planks varnished dark, oars stowed and mast lowered, wrapped with a black sail.  It looked surprisingly seaworthy.

Slipping the bowline loose, Logan said,  "Help me get it into the water."

John Ross and Jeanette hurried to help him push, but the boat didn't need much help.  It slid easily down the ramp and splashed into the water.  They clambered down the slanting ramp and hopped in.  The boat wasn't taking on any water, and Logan allowed himself some cautious optimism.  Maybe, if they were very lucky.  Maybe Gilman wouldn't expect them to try escaping this way.

The closely-packed forest of pilings didn't allow enough room to row the boat.  Logan and Jeanette had to maneuver it like a canoe, and Jeanette proved better at this than Logan, who kept bonking the front of the boat into the wooden columns.

"Dip-dip and swing!" she whispered. "Like the summer camp song."

"I didn't _go_ to summer camp," he whispered back. "John Ross, are we sinking yet?"

"Nope. Still doing good."

They glided out from beneath the warehouse into the night air.  Logan shipped his oar, catching Jeanette muttering something under her breath that sounded like, "Thank God."

John Ross scrambled to the bow of the boat and pulled out his compass as Logan shoved the mast up.  It locked neatly into its metal cleat on the bottom of the boat.  He ran up the black sail.  It caught with a snap and bellied.  He angled the boat south, tacking against the wind, heading for the mouth of the Miskatonic River, and Arkham, and home.  Once they were headed in the right direction, the wind streamed with them, carrying the boat at a speedy clip, and Logan hardly had to jib at all, save to follow the coastline.

He turned and looked back at Innsmouth.  He could not see anyone following.  The little black boat would have been tough to spot, probably the whole idea behind its construction.  Soon, the lights of Innsmouth fell behind them. 

Logan dug in his pocket, pulling out the photograph, and his mother's lighter, smiling at the aptness of the "Free At Last" inscription.  He lit the photo on fire, held it as it burned almost away, and then dropped the blackened, crumbling remains over the side of the boat.  _So long, Soggy-Thoth._

He was rung out now that his adrenaline rush had drained away, but he felt almost content.  As if he'd done a long day of hard work.

_Well, you have,_ he thought.  _Considering_ _this was all your fault, you've actually done a damn good job._

He turned around to look at Jeanette. "How about if I guess?"

"About the tower?" she replied. "Sure. Knock yourself out."

"You're not going to tell me, are you?"

"Nope," Jeanette said. 

"How about a hint?  Yes or no.  Am I going to die horribly tomorrow?"

"Only if you really want to."

"Don't," John Ross said.  "Okay?"

Logan laughed. "I won't."

"By the way," Jeanette said.  "I have your cell phone."

Logan almost luffed the sail, he swung around so fast. "You have my _cell phone? _Why in God's name didn't you pipe up with that little detail before?"

Jeanette pulled the cell from the knee pocket of her cammo cutoffs and held it out, saying, "Because it wouldn't have worked.  You won't get service until we're past the Innsmouth town line.  And anyway, it's probably ruined.  It got wet."

Logan remembered crossing the covered bridge that afternoon, and WCTH dying abruptly.  He took his phone.  Jeanette had had to dig through the garbage can outside the Starbucks like a bag-lady in order to get it back for him.  John Ross would have jumped in without a second thought, but Jeanette was thirteen, and a girl, and old enough for public trash-combing to be a completely humiliating experience.  Okay, that evened up the score for her Tivo-ing his entire head.  Mostly.  All right, entirely.  Two Dumpster dives in one day was a day nobody needed to have.

"Well," he said, feeling a little guilty for sniping at her all evening. "Thanks, Jeanette."

"You're welcome, Logan," she replied with a wry smile.

***


	13. Punch and Pie

The cell phone was toast.  So much for his passionate love letter to Verizon Wireless.

They beached the black smugglers' boat, running it up a sand-spit in front of somebody's summer cottage, and then reefing the sail.  John Ross seemed to think it would be easy enough to come back in the morning and retrieve the boat, like people did this sort of thing all the time.  And maybe they did, in Arkham.  The Miskatonic Valley was weird in more ways than Logan had fingers and toes to keep count of.  He hoped John Ross was right.  It would be a shame to lose the boat, especially with the whole rest of the summer ahead.

His cousins started up the rocky beach toward the street, but Logan hesitated, looking out at the river, and more particularly at the dark arches of the stone bridge rising above the water.

Footsteps crunched on the sand and stone behind him.  "Are you okay, Logan?" Jeanette asked.

"Yeah." Logan turned to her.  "I'm good."

They walked into town, and he called his grandparents' house from a payphone.  The phone rang once, and his grandmother picked up.  "Hello?"

"Hey.  It's Logan. I'm —"

"Logan!" Grandma Isabel gasped. "Oh, thank heaven! Darling, where _are_ you? We've been worried sick; the police found the car off Highway One —"

"Yeah, about that..."

"Where are you? Are you all right?  Are your cousins with you?"

"I'm fine.  Jeanette and John Ross are here.  They're fine.  We're in a —"

"We're at the Briny Deep Diner," Jeanette supplied, dangling over the back of the booth.  "She knows where it is."

"Yes," said his grandmother.  "Thank you, dear.  Sit tight. I'll call James.  He'll be right over."

Logan glanced at the clock over the counter in the diner.  He was sure it'd be four in the morning, but it was only ten after nine.  He shook his head in tired amazement.

"There you go," Jeanette said as Logan flumped down in the booth beside John Ross.  "Almost as good as that airlift you wanted."

A waitress arrived, holding a tray.  With her curly gray hair and her blue polyester uniform, she looked like a grandmother ought to look. Frumpy and harmless.

"You kids capsize your boat?" she asked.

"Of course not," John Ross replied, sounding miffed.

"Well, all three of you need a bath," the waitress said with a smile. "You smell like Arley's Bait and Tackle."

Logan was about to make a smartass crack, when she set down three gigantic wedges of apple pie with ice cream.  What the hell. They probably all _did _smell like a bait shop.  His cousins certainly looked like deep-fried crap under the glare of the diner's fluorescents: wet and dirty, covered with scrapes and bruises, their hair twisted into witch-knots.  Never mind that they both also looked immensely pleased with themselves.  Logan dug into his slice of pie.  Fuck it. This beat the hell out of an airlift.

About fifteen minutes later, a woman walked into the diner.  Shoulder-length blonde hair, blue eyes, a pretty, worried face.  Docs, ripped jeans and a Green Day concert shirt.  Logan recognized her as the punker chick in the framed snapshot.  His Aunt Eleanor.  John Ross was intently focused on his slice of pie, but Jeanette turned around, following the direction of Logan's gaze.

"Mom!" she shrieked. 

Jeanette shot out of the booth like she'd been fired from an ejector seat, followed by the smaller torpedo of John Ross.  Eleanor Crane's children nearly bowled her over, trying to hug her at once.  She was taller than Logan's mother, but she still staggered under their combined assault.  Logan stood up slowly, unsure of himself. He felt stupid standing there with all the frantic hugging and kissing going on.  Eleanor looked up and spotted him.

"You must be Logan," she said, and smiled in a half-apologetic way, like she'd been unavoidably detained by office work, rather than by both her children trying to scale her like Mount Everest.  "I'm your Aunt Eleanor."

"Hey," Logan said.

A moment later, Grandpa James pushed open the diner door.  _Oh, here it comes_, Logan thought.  His grandfather knew he'd wrecked the car.  The first thing out of his mouth would be —

"Logan, thank God you're safe."

Grandpa James pulled Logan — dirty, wet and smelling like bait — into a tight hug, then stepped back, holding him by both arms.  "Eleanor and I have been looking for you three all night."

Logan winced.  "Sorry."

"I'm sure there's a perfectly good explanation."

"There's _an_ explanation," Logan replied.

His grandfather gave Logan a measuring look.  Not angry.  More as if Grandpa James knew what Logan wasn't saying, or at least suspected a large part.

"I'd very much like to hear it," Eleanor said archly.

Jeanette and John Ross both looked at Logan, and didn't utter a sound.  Grandpa James turned to his daughter and her zip-lipped children. 

"Well now, Norrie," he said, "Logan's brought all three of my grandchildren home safely.  That's the most important thing.  I don't believe any more needs to be said about it."

Eleanor flashed her father a startled, angry look; the sullen punker surfaced for a second.  Then something else passed over her face.  Perhaps it was understanding.  Turning to Logan, Eleanor said coolly,  "Thank you, Logan."

"Sure," Logan replied, acutely aware that, if it had not been for him, his cousins would never have left Arkham in the first place. And that his aunt probably suspected he was to blame.

Grandpa James climbed into the Accord, started it up and pulled out onto Peabody Avenue, headed into town from the waterfront, and Logan waited for him to start in.  This was the worst part.  Once he knew what he was getting, he could deal.  The waiting was the worst.  Worse than that, though, was the knowledge that this time he'd boned himself royally, and his grandparents would send him packing.  Arkham had been a safe place, a nice place, and his grandparents had welcomed him with open arms (literally), but he'd been right.  The second he showed his true colors, they would show theirs.  Well, that was okay.  He preferred things honest.

Logan and his grandfather drove through the dark in silence, the headlight beams picking out bits of houses and trees and cars; a turn-off to Miskatonic University. Clearly marked, Logan noted. Not at all like this morning's tour of the countryside.

He surprised himself by being the one to break the silence.  "I'm sorry."

"I know," Grandpa James said.  "Are you sure you're all right, Logan?  You don't want to go to the hospital?" 

"No," Logan replied  "I'll be fine.  It's just... I know I fu— screwed up."

"Did you mean to wreck my car?" his grandfather asked him, sounding curious rather than angry, but Logan knew this ploy. Grandpa James added, "Did you do it on purpose?"

"No sir."

"Was it worth it?"

"I think it was."

"Good," his grandfather said.

Logan couldn't see his grandfather's face well enough in the dark to interpret the remark.

"Look," he said.  "I know you're going to punish me —"

"Do you think you deserve to be punished?"

"Yes."

"What kind of punishment do you think you deserve?"

This was another familiar trick.  Generally, it saved time to pick the worst punishment, because he would get it anyway.  But, his grandfather was an unknown quantity.  Logan countered with, "What do you think I deserve?"

Grandpa James glanced over at him for a moment, then returned his attention to the dark road ahead.  "I wasn't planning to punish you at all."

"I..." Logan said.  "But..."

"If it makes you feel better, you can mow the lawn, or help me organize my research notes, although that's really more torture than anybody deserves."

Logan gaped at him stupidly.  "But, I totaled your car."

"The car can be fixed.  I'm just grateful you and your cousins are safe and sound."

This wasn't going at all the way Logan had pictured it going.  He said, attempting to muster some sarcasm,  "Can you recommend a nice bed and breakfast?"

"The Timbleton Arms is nice."  Grandpa James replied, "But, you already have a bed. And your grandmother makes a mean breakfast."

"Come on.  You can't seriously..." 

"What? Still welcome the Antichrist into our home?"

"Well... yeah," Logan said, a little deflated and puzzled by his grandfather's amused tone.

"Do you want to leave Arkham?" Grandpa James asked.

Logan shook his head, and then realized his grandfather couldn’t see the gesture; he muttered, "No."

"I don't want you to leave, either.  You're seventeen; we expected a bit of trouble.  Our kids were exactly the same way.  You're in one piece.  That's the most important thing.  And you did what you thought was right.  Don't take it to heart."

Logan stared fiercely down at his hands, clenched into tight fists on his thighs.  He knew the bad was coming.  The slap to the ear, the punch to the kidney, the car's cigarette lighter pressed into the crease of his elbow. 

_Don't do this, _he thought._ Please don't do this to me. Please.  Just hit me and get it over with._

His grandfather laid a hand on Logan's shoulder.  Logan cringed instinctively, hunching his shoulders, lifting his hands to protect his head.  His grandfather snatched his hand away as if Logan had burned him.  The Accord jigged across the median, swerved back again.  There were no cars coming the other way.  There was no slap.  No punch.  No sudden, hard shove against the dashboard.  Just Grandpa James sitting with his hands clamped at ten and two on the steering wheel.

"That cocksucking bastard," his grandfather said in a low tone vibrating with disbelief and fury.

Logan stared at him, immeasurably shocked — shocked in a church picnic, "Oh, my stars and garters!" way — to hear his _grandfather_ swearing, and with such vehemence.

"He beats you, doesn't he?  Your father.  That fucking asshole."

Logan said nothing.  Braced for the hit.  Muscles tight.  He could feel himself shaking. 

"She never told us. She never said a single word."  Grandpa James took a deep breath, and then added in a steadier voice,  "I would never lay a hand on you like that, Logan.  I don't expect you to believe me.  But, that's a promise."

Logan sat up slowly, warily, his hands held tight against him.  His voice wasn't exactly steady. "What do you expect me to say?  Thank you?"

Grandpa James glanced over.  "What would you like to say?"

"Why do you keep doing that?  Answering my questions with questions?"

"Is that what I'm doing?"

He swallowed thickly, and said, "You're not going to hit me."




"No, Logan.  I'm not.  You don't deserve that.  You never have."

Logan turned to look out the windows at the passing darkness, though there wasn't anything to look at.  "You don't know jack about me.  I get exactly what I deserve."

"From now on, I sincerely hope that's true."

Nothing came free.  Logan knew that, and he wanted to take his grandfather's word for it anyhow.  He wanted to believe there was someplace he could curl up and be safe.  Just safe.  No trades, no conditions, no bloody noses.

_Christ, you are fucking pathetic,_ he thought.  _How many more times are you going to just hand yourself over like a Thanksgiving turkey? How many more times before you finally get it? The only free lunch is you, fucko.  Whatever you want, whatever you think you deserve — forget that shit.  They will cook you and eat you._

Logan lowered his head to his knees and covered his face with his hands.  Except, the hit didn't come next.  Not in the car, not back at the house.  Logan waited, but Jeanette was right.  The hit never came.

***


	14. Water Under the Bridge

Logan imagined the late-night knock at the door of his grandparents' house.  The slump-shouldered form of Archibald Gilman glimpsed through the frosted glass window.  _"Pardon me, ma'am, but your grandson and I have unfinished business."  _

That didn't happen either.

Gilman might still waylay and murder him in a dark alley on some moonless night, but it wouldn't do any good.  The photograph was gone.  Check and mate.  All your base are belong to us.  Game over.

Logan pulled on a Pirates tee shirt and sweatpants.  Clean goddamn clothes.  He couldn't remember the last time he'd truly appreciated that.  The extravagant luxury of being warm and dry and pink-squeaky clean, and home for the night after a long, hot shower, with only one item on his To-Do list: Climb into bed.

He wasn't sure what to do with his dirty clothes.  He didn't even want to touch them.  He'd already left a drippy brown trail up the stairs and across the hall carpeting like a zombie spoor out of an EC Comic.  He left his orange tee shirt and jeans where they'd fallen in a wet snarl on the black and white tiles of the bathroom floor.  He climbed the stairs to his mother's little room, opened the door and, not Archibald Gilman, but instead Grandma Isabel, was sitting on the bed, waiting for him.

"I won't stay long," she said. "Come sit down, Logan.  I just wanted to make sure you're all right."

Logan padded across the braided rag rug and sat down on the bed beside her.  "I'm okay.  I'm just tired, is all."

"You look like the two pounds of ground chuck I picked up at the Stop and Shop this morning."

Logan smiled. "I've looked worse," he said, thinking of the thrashing Weevil Navarro had given him at the beginning of June.

"I imagine you have," Grandma Isabel replied, and she was likely not thinking of Weevil.  "Are you sure you don't want to go to the hospital?"

Logan shook his head, then declared, "I'm going to pay for the car."

"That isn't necessary."

"It was my fault. "

"No, it wasn't."

Logan said, "I know Arkham's a small town, and you're probably best friends with the mechanic's mom, and the mechanic'll get you the parts at cost, and do the labor for free, and then you'll bake him a blueberry cobbler."

"Oh, _honestly,_" his grandmother said, sounding offended by the grandmotherly stereotype.

"So, I am gonna go down there," Logan continued,  "and I am gonna tell him to royally shaft me on that repair bill.  Because it's not like it's actually _my_ money paying my credit card bills, you know.  It's Aaron Echolls' money. I hope it's a really expensive repair.  I hope it's obscene.  And then, you know what?  After the car's fixed, I'm gonna get it detailed.  That'll piss him off."

Grandma Isabel patted him affectionately on the knee.  "God bless you, Logan.  You really are completely evil, aren't you?"

"I've been telling you that since the first time you talked to me."

"Logan..."

He lifted his hand, as if to tell her his mind was made up.

"Are you all right?' she continued.  "I mean here."  She touched her own chest, over her heart.

He frowned at her. "You knew I'd go, didn't you?" he said. "To Innsmouth.  You knew I'd go straight there."

"I thought you might. You're a lot like Lynn."

"You could have just _not told_ me, Grandma.  You could have lied."

"Could I?" his grandmother said in a musing tone of voice.  That little smile was back, right at the corner of her mouth.  "Would you have left it at that?  Not been willing to turn over heaven and earth to find her?"

"Well," Logan said, irritated.  "I... no.  Fine."

"Did you find what you were looking for?"

"No," he said.  "Not what I thought I'd find."

"But, something to set your mind at rest?

"I guess." He looked down at his hands.  The knuckles of his right hand were purple; his hand had started to swell and stiffen up.  It felt like a surgical glove full of warm water.  "She's gone.  She..." He sighed.  Again, in his entire store of snarky remarks, he didn't have the words.  "She's gone."

He thought for sure Grandma Isabel would answer with some Splenda-sweeted crap about how his mother was with the angels, or in a better place, or she wasn't really gone as long as they remembered her. Things a grandmother _should_ say.  His grandmother simply laid her hand over his unbruised one.

"Yes," Grandma Isabel said.  "She's gone."

"I miss her. She left me.  But I... " Logan took a deep breath, let it out slowly.  "I can say goodbye.  I can forgive her."

"What about yourself?"

One corner of his mouth lifted.  "Still working on that."

"Working is good," said Grandma Isabel.

Logan's smile widened a little bit.

She put a hand on his damp hair, cupping the back of his head.  Then she stood up. "Why don't you get some sleep?"

"Yes, ma'am."

***


	15. In the Cards

If he dreamed, he didn't remember any dreams when he woke up the following morning to the sound of rain sheeting down outside the French doors.  Dappled gray light spread throughout the little room under the eaves.  Thunder grumbled in the distance, and Charlemagne the cat was sacked out across Logan's legs.  Logan laid his head down on the pillow again, and fell back to sleep.

As it turned out, John Ross was right about the black smugglers' boat. Nobody stole it.   On the beach by the pirate caves, John Ross broke a glass Coke bottle over the bow of the boat and with a great deal of ceremony, christened the boat _Evelynn._  Several times over the summer, they sailed her up the Miskatonic River. 

Logan took a flight back to California at the end of August.  He'd deliberately scheduled his connection with a day layover in Boston.  As a result, he spent most of the flight to LAX fiddling and squirming around in his seat, trying to find a position that wouldn't press against the painfully itchy, brand-spanking-new tattoo of the speak-easy mermaid on his right shoulder blade.  He wasn't very successful.

_You really are a glutton for punishment,_ he thought.  But, it had been worth it.

Eventually, he found a comfortable way to sit.  He must have, or he wouldn't have fallen asleep.

"Excuse me, sir?"

Logan opened one eye.  Lilly was bending over him, wearing a navy-blue stewardess uniform that practically wrote its own porno movie.  In fact, Logan's brain was writing it now, and it was called _Where Should I Stow This Oversized Item, Miss_?  He could see straight down Lilly's top to her breasts, cupped in a lacy pink bra.  Eventually, he noticed her hair was styled in a sixties flip, a little peaked cap perched jauntily on top of her head.

"Would you like a blanket?" she asked him, smiling saucily.

"No, but I'll tell you what I _would_ like."

"That's called necrophilia, sir."

"Oh, I see.  Only wet blankets on this flight." 

Lilly sat down in the seat next to him and crossed her legs, which made her short skirt ride up even higher.  "Whew! My dogs are barking."

"Are you here just to torment me, or am I dreaming about you for some other reason?"

"Did you have a nice summer?"

"You know what," Logan said.  "I actually did.  I had a great summer."

"Are you ready to go back?"

"Yeah," he said slowly.  "Yeah, I'm ready.  I know it's not going to be easy, but... yes.  Bring it.  I'm ready."

Lilly regarded him gravely.  "This is the tower."

"Huh?"

"The _tower,"_ she repeated.  "You saw it.  On Witch Island."

"Are you going to tell me what that means, finally? Please?"

"What do you think it means?"

"I'm going shopping for CDs?"

"You need to get your fortune told more often."

"No thanks."

"It's a Tarot card, dummy.  Number sixteen.  The Lightning-Struck Tower.  It's major astrological influence is..." Lilly glanced toward the ceiling, like she actually had to think about it.  "Mmmm... mars."

Logan slapped himself on the head.

"This will be the hardest part," Lilly continued.  "The worst part.  And you can't stand on your own this time, Logan.  You need to ask for help, because everything is gonna come down."

"Another cryptic prediction?"

"No," she said.  "Not cryptic at all.  When the shit starts flying, let your friends be your friends."  Then her impish smile returned.  "But, hey! If you _want _another cryptic..."

"I don't."

"You'll receive a sign from above."

Lilly pointed straight up, as if to illustrate her already-very-obvious statement.  Logan glared at her.

"And you'll know the reason," she finished.

"You're a complete wench, you know."

Lilly laughed. "That's why you love me.  But, don't worry.  You won't see me again.  Not for a long, long time."

"Don't say that."

Her smile became wistful.  "Time to say goodbye, Logan."

"Lilly, no." Logan stretched out his hand to her, and she was gone.

***


	16. Heaven is a Place on Earth

When Logan stepped off the plane at LAX, somebody other than Duncan was waiting for him him at the gate.  Star center of the Neptune High basketball team, and Veronica's frequent lunch buddy — Wallace Fennel, not even bothering to hide his irritation.  That all registered as a faint afterthought.  He saw Wallace, and light bloomed behind his eyes, washing out everything else for a moment in the glare of this one glorious thought, this choirs-of-angels, oh-my-fucking-God, indescribably gorgeous realization: she was here.  Veronica was here.  She'd figured out his flight and recruited Wallace and driven all the way from Neptune to LAX, after they had broken up so bitterly, after all the angry words, after _everything_.  After he had refused to talk to her all summer.  She couldn't possibly think he'd do anything except turn his back on her, and here she was, and that feeling of breathing with broken ribs, of breathing through broken glass — that feeling was exactly the same and everything else was completely different as if he'd been standing still while the universe wheeled around him. 

He strolled over to Wallace, putting on his most innocent expression. "Wallace Fennell, my goodness."

Wallace looked genuinely shocked for a second, and then his expression clouded over with a scowl once more.

"Hey," Wallace replied, shoving his hands in his pockets.

Logan glanced past Wallace and spotted a girl he'd seen with Wallace before, sitting in one of the plastic chairs.  He nodded at her.

"Listen," Wallace said,  "Duncan Kane..."

"Where is she?"

Wallace glared up at Logan, clearly exasperated. "Over at the Starbucks.  You were s'posed to go over there because Duncan wanted to have a _talk._"

"Oh, I _see._  Wallace, don't you ever get tired of being her little homunculus?"

"You call me a homo again," Wallace said hotly, "and — what the fuck did you just call me? Never mind; you call me that again, and I will _school _your oh-niner ass.  I don't care how much bigger you are than me."

"Hey." Logan held up his hands. "I'm just calling a spade—"

Wallace's expression darkened thunderously.

_Goddammit,_ Logan thought.  _I wasn't even _trying _to insult him that time._  "Sorry," he said.

"You what?"

"I didn't mean that to come off as racist.  Playing cards.  That's what I meant."

"Yet, you're okay with calling me a faggot."

"A homunculus is like... a minion.  Which, is exactly what you are, Fennell.  Faggot or not, that's your own business, but you're definitely Veronica's flying monkey. Sorry to be the bearer of ill tidings."

"Yeah?  Well, damn.  I am ashamed of myself." Wallace covered his heart with both hands.  "Why, oh why am I not one of the lucky ones?  Why don't I live in the oh-niner zip, so Logan Echolls can take me under his wing and teach me the ancient art of being a cynical, arrogant, prick?  Neptune sure doesn't have enough of those.  And let me tell you something else, Echolls —"

"Please. Grace me with your profound wisdom, O Sophomore."

"— I'd rather be Veronica's flying monkey any damn day, than the guy who's gonna wake up three years from now and call himself a fucking idiot, 'cause he let V. walk away."

"Three years?" Logan exclaimed. "That guy _is_ a fucking idiot.  It's only taken _me_ six weeks!"

Wallace's expression softened suddenly, and for a second, he almost smiled.  Instead, he told Logan, "Look, man.  Veronica knew if she showed up to meet you, you'd totally pull a Michael York."

"Gee, Wallace, I've never heard _that_ joke before.  But, I do give you points for unique presentation."

Wallace gave an irritated shrug, like he was wearing an itchy sweater.  "I was supposed to have this whole story about how Duncan Kane called me, and his car broke down, and some damn thing happened with his cell phone..."

"Like it was mysteriously stolen by parties unknown.  'Golly, officer, I didn't even see who did it.  I got a glimpse of something tiny and blonde, and then it was gone — '" Logan snapped his fingers. "'— just like that!'  I'm away half the summer, and this is the best scenario you can come up with?  This is insulting."

"Wasn't my idea.  I didn't miss you at all."

Logan flopped into one of the empty chairs at the gate, next to Wallace's girlfriend, and extended his hand.  "Hey.  I'm Logan.  Nice to meet you."

She shook hands with him rather warily.  "Georgia."

"Just so you know," Wallace added, "V. didn't hafta steal Duncan's phone.  He gave it to her.  That whole business was _his_ idea.  We were both there when you hung up on her for, like, the three hundredth time."

_And maybe that means Veronica and Duncan... _Logan pushed the thought away before it went any further.  He wouldn't hope for that much.  The intel he had right now was already making him light-headed.

"So," Logan said, stretching out his legs, "The idea was, you bring a date so you're not third wheel."

"You even listening to me, white boy?"

"I heard you."

Wallace paused a second, then replied,  "Yeah, pretty much.  Georgia and I drive you back to Neptune, you and V. sit in the back seat and — make out, or kill each other, or I don't know what, and I don't care, 'cause I'm gonna flip up the rear-view mirror.  I do not want to watch.  That's Veronica's gig."

"I got a better idea.  You drive, I'll ride shotgun, and Veronica and Georgia can make out in the back seat.  We can take turns watching." He tipped Georgia a wink.

Wallace's mouth quirked, but then he sobered up fast after a glance at his irritated girlfriend.  He scowled at Logan.

"I'm just kidding," Logan added for Georgia's benefit.

"Sure," Georgia said dryly.  "No hard feelings."

"Why don't you just go over there and talk to Veronica," Wallace said. "So we can all go home?"

Reaching over his shoulder, Logan rubbed at the bandage covering the tattoo, trying hard not to scratch. "What, you didn't set your Tivo to record the _Deep Space Nine _marathon?"

Wallace folded his arms over his chest.  "If there was a _DS9_ marathon on T.V. today, I would _not_ be at the airport, wasting my valuable Dax-watching time, talking to _you_."

Logan grinned.

"In fact," Wallace added, not looking at all put off by Logan's amusement, "I'd rather be home watching a _Hi Hi_ _Puffy Ami Yumi_ marathon and eating a big bowl of cockroaches."

"I like _Hi Hi Puffy Ami Yumi_," Georgia protested mildly.

Logan folded his hands over his stomach, and slid down a bit further in his chair, getting comfortable. "You know it's totally killing her.  She's over there watching us from behind a newspaper with eye-holes cut out, asking herself, What the hell is he doing?  What could he and Wallace even find to talk about? Why doesn't he look pissed off? Why isn't he coming over here to see Duncan?"

Wallace blinked at Logan, then he smiled for real. "Did Echolls even fall for that broke-ass story about Duncan paying Wallace to come pick him up?"

"Are you _serious?"_ Logan asked.

Wallace sat down on the other side of Georgia. "Told you it was broke-ass."

"Did Wallace crack under pressure?" said Logan.

"Did Wallace double-cross me?" offered Georgia.

"Nice!" Logan exclaimed appreciatively.

"Girl, I like how you think," Wallace added.

"Are he and Logan going to start making out?" Georgia said. "Or will they wait 'til we get to the car?"

Logan burst out laughing. 

"Whoa!" Wallace sat bolt upright and made an urgent "time-out" sign with his hands. "Hell no! Thanks for making sure I will _never_ sleep again!"

"Turnabout is fair play," Georgia pointed out.

That made Logan laugh harder, and then after staring at him like he'd gone crazy, Wallace and Georgia started laughing as well.  The thought of Veronica sitting over there, stewing and scowling and wondering why the fuck all three of them were howling like monkeys — that made it even more funny.

After a minute or two, Logan took a deep breath, wiped his eyes, collected himself and said,  "So.  Wallace, Georgia... how was your vacation?"

"Lemme tell you 'bout my vacation," Wallace answered. "V. hasn't given me one second's peace all summer.  Calling me up in the middle of the night, all the damn time, crying about you.  Why? I don't know, 'cause I'm not seeing anything especially worth crying over, here.  But she's been going through hell, blaming herself for everything."

"Really?"

"Don't be an even bigger asshole, Echolls.  Go kiss your girl."

Logan sighed.  Then he smiled.  "Yeah.  All right. Might as well get it over with."

He got up, and walked out of the gate, making a beeline for the Starbucks.  He didn't see Veronica anywhere in the small coffee bar, and the smiling mermaid over the door had no advice for him.

"You little green bitch," he murmured, then he returned her smile. 

"Logan?" In her rocker-chick black hoodie and jeans, her hair tousled and her bag slung across one shoulder, she looked small and very unsure of her welcome.




"I'm sorry," she said.  "I know you came over here expecting..."

"I expected you."

"Oh." Veronica wilted a little more, waiting for Logan to angrily rip into her, no doubt.  He was silent.

"I just had to talk to you," she said.  "To explain.  I went through this all in my head a hundred times.  I should've written it down." She laughed softly, then continued, "I never wanted to believe you killed Lilly, but I had to be sure.  For her.  I couldn't just walk up to you and ask you if you'd killed her.  I didn't know what to do.  I had to treat you like a suspect.  I had to find out.  I can never make it up to you, I know that.  I know we can't be like we were before, but I'm so sorry I hurt you.  I just wanted you to know that."  She paused, and then blew out an exasperated, nervous breath.  "God, Logan!  Say something, please."

"Was it worth it?"

"Yes," she said.  "In the end... yes, it was."

"Thanks for being honest."

"It was never about you.  It was about Lilly."

"I know that, Veronica.  I was serious," Logan replied.  "Thank you."

She looked like she wasn't sure what to do now.  Logan liked Veronica Mars off-balance with all her defenses scattered.  He always had.  The only difference was, now he had no desire to slice her to ribbons with every cruel taunt he could think up.

"I would've done the same thing," he said. 

She looked down at her sneakers.  Her blonde hair cascaded forward to hide her face.

"How's your dad?" he asked.

"Much better," she replied without looking up.  "He came home from the hospital a couple weeks ago."

"Good. I'm glad."  Then he smiled, though she couldn’t see it.  "Missed me, huh? Just couldn't tear yourself away from my manly charms?"

Veronica lifted her head, her expression taut.  "Logan, don't tease me."

"Who's teasing?"

"Yes," she said, her eyes narrowing, her little face getting stubborn and closed-up. "I missed you."

"I missed you, too."

"Really? Hanging up on me repeatedly wasn't enough Veronica quality time?"

"Oh no, no."  He raised one hand.  "You don't get to bust my chops, Veronica.  If that's what you came here for, you can just turn around and walk away, and at least give me the pleasure of admiring your ass."

She huffed. "What else do you want me to say?"

"How 'bout something nice?"

"I can't see your ass from here."

He folded his arms over his chest.  "I'm waiting."

Veronica thought about that one for a moment.

"Don't strain yourself," he added. 

"All right," she replied quietly. "Fine.  The whole drive out here from Neptune, all I could think about was seeing you.  It almost didn't matter whether you wanted to see me or not.  Just stand here and talk to you, even if we're fighting." Tears shimmered in her eyes.  "All I wanted was to see your stupid face." She put her hands over her face. "Oh, shit. I'm sorry, Logan.  I'm so sorry."

"Hey, you almost managed to choke out a whole endearment there," he said gently. "I'm impressed." 

She dropped her hands from her eyes, looking both annoyed and defeated, like she'd come to the end of herself, and she had no more to give, and she was just going to stand there and watch him walk away.

Boy, did he know that feeling.

He took hold of Veronica's shoulders, leaned down and kissed her cheek.  Then he kissed her lips.  For a second, she stiffened, and then her arms slid around his neck and clamped tight.  He pulled her into a hug, and the kiss deepened from tentative to urgent, and he closed his eyes and let her warmth fill him up, and it was like they'd never been apart.  He'd actually forgotten how good she felt. 

There was a lacuna in the airport noise around them and in the sudden quiet, Logan realized they were standing under one of the P.A. speakers in the Starbucks, and that it was playing that damned Hoobastank song, no doubt for the ten thousandth time today.

_I've found a reason for me  
_To change who I used to be  
_A reason to start over new  
_And the reason is you...____

Logan drew away slightly from Veronica, and scowled at the ceiling.  "Oh, that's cute."

_I'll know the reason?  Ha-hah, Lilly.  So very funny._

Veronica's mouth and cheeks were all pink; nevertheless, she tilted her head and shot him an archly amused look, "What's going on?  Did you get a sign from above?"

By way of an answer, Logan pulled Veronica close and kissed her again.  He knew it was only his imagination, but he could have sworn he heard Lilly laughing.

THE END  
***

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **About H.P.Lovecraft, the Cthulhu Mythos, &amp; the Crossover**
> 
> _Fish Out of Water_ is a crossover between _Veronica Mars_ and H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos. The town of Arkham, home to Logan's grandparents, often serves as a base of operations for Lovecraft's protagonists: academics and scientists (some of whom work at Miskatonic University). However, Arkham itself can be dangerous territory. The M.U. Library's restricted section houses many forbidden magical books (among these the terrifying _Necronomicon_, penned by The Mad Arab, Abdul Alhazred). The town is frequently referred to by Lovecraft as "witch-haunted Arkham." The infamous Keziah Mason was hung for witchcraft in 1692, but she is sometimes spotted creeping among the crumbling standing stones on Witch Island, accompanied by her familiar, Brown Jenkin.
> 
> In 1931, H.P. Lovecraft wrote a story called _The Shadow Over Innsmouth_. The narrator discovers the dilapidated town of Innsmouth on an ill-fated bus ride. Interrogating the town drunk, Zadok Allen, provides a lot of interesting tidbits about the town, including the fact that the natives have for generations been breeding with an underwater race of monsters called The Deep Ones, and that these Deep Ones plan to rise and take over the world.
> 
> The background information provided by Logan's grandmother in Chapter Five, and by Uncle Archibald in Chapter Ten, is all taken from in Lovecraft's story. The narrator in _S.O.I._ also spends a harrowing night at Innsmouth's Gilman Hotel. He escapes, and tells the government of his adventures. Agents arrive in Innsmouth in February of 1928 to destroy the Y'ha-nthlei, the sunken city beneath Devil Reef. But for the narrator, it is already too late.
> 
> The only Lovecraftian element in Fish not native to _Shadow Over Innsmouth_, is Yog-Sothoth. Yog Sothoth is part of the Cthulhu Mythos, but not part of the original Innsmouth story. "Soggy-Thoth" appears in several other Lovecraft stories, including _The Dunwich Horror_ and _The Lurker at the Threshold._ When visiting The Miskatonic Valley, it's not wise to stray too far.
> 
> I can't remember who first introduced me to H.P. Lovecraft's work. All my friends in High School were into him. We also played D&amp;D, went to Sci-Fi conventions; and most of us were members of an official school club called Future Mad Scientists and Sorcerers of America, so that gives you a good idea about my kind of friends. FMSSA was an organization of long standing at our high school, and I suspect the older members routinely corrupted the younger ones. In any case, I took to Lovecraft immediately. His pervasive vision of monstrous, otherworldly gods and vast dreamscapes beyond time and space, struck a powerful chord with a teenager who -- like every teenager --already felt alienated and weirded out by life in general. Perhaps another part of his appeal was that (like Lovecraft), both my parents were from New England, and I spent most summers at my grandmother's house in Massachusetts. I knew where HPL was coming from. And I suspect we're distantly related somehow.
> 
> _Iä, Cthulhu fhtagn!_


End file.
